Malahide Lions Club’s major art exhibition and sale in the Tennis Club on 18th & 19th October saw a celebration of Malahide’s most celebrated artist, Nathaniel Hone.
Nathaniel Hone the Younger was born on October 26, 1831 and died 107 years ago on October 14, 1917. He was a prolific Irish painter who began his career as a railway engineer but gave this up to study art in Paris.
Most of his later paintings are landscapes, very often enlivened with animals and occasionally with figures. In France he was influenced by the painter Gustav Courbet. His closest painting tips were, however, from another French impressionist, Camille Corot. Hone became a close friend of one of Corot’s followers at the Barbizon School of landscape painting. At Barbizon he learned to appreciate colour, texture and tone in the landscape and apply it in strong and confident brushworks to the painting of Irish subjects on his return.
On the coast road to Portmarnock, close by the entrance to Seapark estate, stands Muldowney House, which was once the Hone’s home. In 1872, he married Magdalen Jameson of the Jameson distilling family. After a short sojourn in Seafield House at Kilcrea on the northern shore of Malahide estuary, they moved to Muldowney House. They lived here until 1895 when they moved to St. Doulagh’s Park following the death of his Aunt Dorothea at her home there. Thereafter, Hone’s brother-in-law, the Rev. William Reid, resided in Muldowney House until his death in 1912.
Hone became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1880 and accepted an R.H.A. professorship in 1894. While at Muldowney House, he spent his time painting, sketching, sailing, yacht racing and golfing. The changing light and seascapes of Malahide attracted him. He had a studio and gallery at Muldowney and painted one of his best-known works, ‘Malahide Sands’ from his window, which still overlooks the beach. When Nathaniel died in 1917, his wife bequeathed the greatest part of his collection to the National Gallery of Ireland.
Hone, his brother-in-law Reid and Richard Wogan, 5th Baron Talbot founded Malahide Golf Club on the foreshore and land around the house in 1892.
