Nathaniel Hone the Younger — Painter of the Irish Sky and Shore

Irish Artist · 1831–1917

Nathaniel Hone the Younger

The engineer who walked away to Barbizon, and came home to paint the sky over the Dublin coast.

Shop the Hone Collection

The Wave by Nathaniel Hone the Younger, canvas print of Atlantic surf under a pale sky

The Wave (c.1890) — Atlantic surf under a wide, soft sky.

The Story

Nathaniel Hone the Younger painted weather. Not the drama of it — the long, grey-gold breath of an Irish sky over flat sand, a line of sea, cattle standing in a field near Malahide. His pictures are quiet, and they reward the person who keeps looking.

He was born on 26 October 1831 at Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin, into a prosperous merchant family; his great-grand-uncle was the eighteenth-century portraitist Nathaniel Hone the Elder, which is why the "Younger" sticks. He trained first as an engineer at Trinity College Dublin and went to work on the Irish railways. Then, in 1853, he gave it up and went to Paris to paint.

In Paris he studied under Adolphe Yvon and then Thomas Couture, the teacher who also trained Manet. But the real school was the Forest of Fontainebleau. Hone settled among the realist landscape painters at Barbizon — the circle of Corot and Millet — and spent the best part of two decades in France, painting outdoors, learning tone and texture straight from the motif. He sketched on the Normandy coast too: the reverse of one of his sketchbook pages carries a study of boats and cliffs at Étretat.

He came home in the early 1870s, married Magdalene Jameson, and settled on a farm at Malahide in north County Dublin. For the rest of his life the estuary, the dunes and the open fields there were his studio. He was elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1880 and became its Professor of Painting in 1894. In the early 1890s he and Magdalene toured the Mediterranean — Venice, Corfu, Athens and Egypt — and the small, sunlit watercolours from that journey are some of his loveliest work.

In 1901 Sarah Purser hung his paintings beside those of John Butler Yeats in a Dublin exhibition. A young dealer named Hugh Lane went to see it, and the idea of a gallery of modern art for Dublin took hold of him; when Lane's gallery opened, Hone was among its first donors. He died in Dublin on 14 October 1917. Magdalene offered the contents of his studio to the National Gallery of Ireland — well over five hundred oils and watercolours — which is why the Gallery holds more Hone than anyone could hang at once.

For how he fits among the painters who made the Irish landscape, read Irish Landscape Painters: The Artists Who Painted Ireland. Not to be confused with Evie Hone, the twentieth-century stained-glass artist.

Timeline

  • 1831 — Born 26 October at Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin.
  • 1853 — Leaves engineering for painting and moves to Paris; studies under Adolphe Yvon and Thomas Couture.
  • 1850s–60s — Paints among the Barbizon landscape painters in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
  • 1870s — Returns to Ireland, marries Magdalene Jameson and settles at Malahide, Co. Dublin.
  • 1880 — Elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.
  • 1890s — Mediterranean tour with Magdalene: Venice, Corfu, Athens and Egypt.
  • 1894 — Becomes Professor of Painting at the RHA.
  • 1901 — Shown alongside John Butler Yeats in the exhibition, organised by Sarah Purser, that brings Hugh Lane to Irish art.
  • 1917 — Dies 14 October in Dublin; his widow later offers the contents of his studio to the National Gallery of Ireland.

His Dublin

From a Georgian street in south Dublin to the open shore at Malahide. Click a pin for the places that shaped his life and work.

Fitzwilliam Place · Malahide · the National Gallery of Ireland · the Hugh Lane Gallery.

Featured Works

View all Hone prints

Collector's Guide

Start with The Wave — the big statement piece, on canvas, for a wall that needs weather on it. The sketchbook watercolours from the National Gallery of Ireland are the more intimate Hone: Low Clouds over a Beach and A Distant Coastline hang well as a pair, and Hillside Heather brings the moor indoors. For the traveller, The Pyrenees Mountains and the Amalfi pergola carry the light of his journeys south. Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection.

The Hone Lover's Gift Guide

Three ways into his world, at three price points.

Discover Similar Artists

James Arthur O'Connor — the Romantic landscape painter of the generation before. · Walter Osborne — fellow plein-air painter, trained on the Continent. · John Butler Yeats — his partner in the 1901 exhibition. · Mildred Anne Butler — watercolours of the Irish countryside.