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As Walter Strickland observed, Andrew Nicholl was devoted
to art from his boyhood, and ‘won a reputation as a landscape
painter in his native town.’ He would later be known as the most
talented, renowned and proli&c topographical Irish artist of the
nineteenth century. His training was important. He worked
as a talented apprentice at the printing business of F.D. Finley
where he was under the instruction of his elder brother William.
While in London, he spent considerable time at the Dulwich
College Gallery, where he copied paintings on show. He admired
the work of J.M.W. Turner. Jeanne Sheehy has written; ‘Most
of his work is interesting, but particularly exciting is the series
in which wild%owers in the foreground form a screen through
which we dimly perceive the landscape. !e paintings have a
sharpness and naïveté which is totally captivating.’ !is series,
of which ‘
Distant View of Derry through a Bank of Poppies,
’ is
an exemplary case, demonstrates the artist’s talents aptly. He is
evidently a master of the watercolour medium. !e work features
the &ne exactitude of botanical illustration and combines this
with a distant view of Derry City where a unifying cast of even
light allows background and foreground to complement. !e
eye eagerly explores the frieze of wild%owers in the foreground
- poppies, corn%owers, oxeye daisies, dandelions - the beautiful
colours of this remarkable roadside display. !e city appears
almost incidental in the distance, viewed at this range, and yet
its placement is highly strategic. In this vignette, placed largely
to the left and glimpsed through the %owers, Nicholl includes
enough detail to demonstrate Derry’s importance at the time.
Rebuilt in the Georgian style in the eighteenth century, the
principal detail shown is the city’s &rst bridge across the River
Foyle, which Earl Bishop Frederick Augustus Hervey was
responsible for building. As well as indicating the ecclesiastical
landmarks, the artist includes a range of shipping to demonstrate
the importance of the City’s port in the nineteenth century as
an embarkation point for Irish emigrants leaving for North
America. !ese combination views of wild%owers and landscape
were a speciality of Nicholl’s and feature a number of locations
including; Newcastle, Fairhead, Howth, Bray, Carlingford, Lough
Swilly, Ramelton, Rathmullan, Dunluce Castle, and Downhill
Mussendon Temple. !is style of depiction surely came from
Nicholl’s interest in topographical art, combined with his interest
in botanical illustration, which became popular and re&ned in
terms of accuracy in the eighteenth century due to advances in
the printing process, of which Nicholl had &rst-hand experience.
In
Ireland’s Painters 1600-1940,
Crookshank and Glin, write ‘In
those near-surrealist watercolours...there is an originality which
makes them amongst the most haunting...Irish paintings of the
early nineteenth century. !ese are his masterpieces.’ (p210) John
Hewitt observes ‘...his originality appears most strongly [in his]
landscape of distant hills, foregrounded by a wedge or bank of
roadside wild %owers. By scratch and scrape of the surface of his
paper,...for the spray-frayed tips of breaking waves, he gave his
%owers and grasses an illusory precision and &nish.’ !e ‘sgra(tto’
or ‘scraping out’ technique that Hewitt mentions is the ideal
device to capture the delicacy and &ne lines within the wild%owers.
Nicholl began painting these wild%owers works quite early in his
career. In 1830, the sister of his patron Emerson Tennent wrote a
sonnet after receiving from the artist ‘a beautiful coloured drawing
of %owers.’ He was a highly proli&c artist and the Ulster Museum
alone has almost 400 works by Andrew Nicholl.
Marianne O’Kane Boal
!*,### - &#,###
56
Andrew Nicholl, RHA, RUA (1804-1886)
A View of Derry !rough a Bank of Poppies
Watercolour, 36 x 52cm (14 x 20"”)
Signed
Provenance: Previously in the collection of John O’Sullivan;
Sold in these rooms, “Important Irish Art” Sale, 29th March 2000 (front cover
illustration), Lot 83, where purchased by current owner
