74
49
Andrew Nicholl RHA (1804-1886)
A View of a Castle Through a Bank of Poppies and Wild Flowers
Watercolour, 33.5 x 51cm (13 x 20”)
Signed
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 prolific 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 wildflowers in the foreground form a
screen through which we dimly perceive the landscape.The paintings have a sharpness and naïveté which is totally captivat-
ing.’ This series, of which ‘A View of a Castle through a Bank of Poppies andWild Flowers’ demonstrates the artist’s talents
aptly. He is evidently a master of the watercolour medium. The work features the fine exactitude of botanical illustration
and combines this with a distant view of a castle. The eye eagerly explores the frieze of wildflowers in the foreground -
poppies, cornflowers, oxeye daisies, dandelions - the beautiful colours of this remarkable roadside display. The castle appears
almost incidental in the distance, viewed at this range, and yet its placement is highly strategic.These combination views of
wildflowers 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. This
style of depiction surely came from Nicholl’s interest in topographical art, combined with his interest in botanical illus-
tration, which became popular and refined in terms of accuracy in the eighteenth century due to advances in the printing
process, of which Nicholl had first-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. These 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 flowers. By scratch and scrape of the
surface of his paper ... for the spray-frayed tips of breaking waves, he gave his flowers and grasses an illusory precision and
finish.’ The ‘sgraffitto’ or ‘scraping out’ technique that Hewitt mentions is the ideal device to capture the delicacy and fine
lines within the wildflowers. Nicholl began painting these wildflowers 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 flowers.’ He was
a highly prolific artist and the Ulster Museum alone has almost 400 works by Nicholl.
This catalogue entry was based on a previous write up on
A Distant View of Derry
by Marianne O’Kane Boal in our May
2013 sale.
€6,000 - 8,000
