by Aidan Arnold

This unusual picture was taken at Rogerstown Estuary, Newhaggard, Lusk, in the early 1900s, on the land running along the river from Blake’s Cross to what was Balleally Landfill and is now known as Rogerstown Park.The big man with the beard is Nathaniel Hone and the other gentleman is his Brother Herbert who owned about 600 acres there until it was taken over by the Land Commission in 1935 and divided up between local farmers. Nathaniel Hone “the Younger” (Dublin, 1831 – 1917) was a well known member of a wealthy landed family and the great grand-nephew of another famous artist, Nathaniel Hone (“the Elder”), who lived from 1718 to 1784. Nathaniel the younger married Magdalen Jameson of the family of distillers in 1872. He studied art in Paris and was primarily recognised for his landscape paintings. He lived on the family estate in Malahide where he created hundreds of watercolour drawings of the sea and sands. In 1892 he helped to set up the Malahide Golf Club. Following his death in 1917, his wife gave approximately 500 oil paintings and nearly 900 of his watercolours to the National Gallery of Ireland.