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The rediscovery of the painting ‘
Dans les Vignes’
(In the Vineyard) by Nathaniel Hone in France is of great interest, because it is a landscape
with figures from his early French period, because it is one of a series of vineyard paintings and because it was the picture which was ex-
hibited at the Paris Salon in 1867, one hundred and fifty years ago this year.
Born in Dublin in 1831, Hone studied Engineering in Trinity College, then went to Paris c.1853 to study art. In the ateliers of French painters
Yvon and Couture he drew the figure and copied Old Master paintings in the Louvre. But his real love was for landscape, and he settled
in the artist villages of Barbizon and Bourron-Marlotte near the forest of Fontainebleau, c.1857-1870, becoming friends with some of the
Masters of the Barbizon School. Seven landscapes by Hone were exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1865-1869.
Although primarily a landscapist in his Irish paintings, several of his early French works also include figures. Indeed, figures are quite
prominent in ‘
Dans les Vignes’
, which shows men and women at work in the vineyard, resting, and horses and carts on a bright sunny day.
The vendage, or wine harvest, was one of the quintessential activities of French rural and seasonal life and the 1860s, during the period of
the Second Empire, saw a flourishing of paintings of this subject (several of them, like Hone’s, being exhibited at the Paris Salon). Notable
amongst these were
‘Grape Harvest in Burgundy’
, 1863, by Charles Daubigny (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and ‘
Vendage, Effet du Soir’
, 1868, by
Leon Lhermitte
(1)
.
It is not known if Hone’s ‘
Dans les Vignes’
is set at Barbizon or near the River Seine or, with its slight rise and open landscape behind, further
south, if not being quite meridional. The picture is carefully composed, with a balance of light and dark tones, and with foreground, middle
distance and distance. On the left is a group of trees, in the centre foreground stands a man with blue smock, while behind women in
white blouses toil among the vines. On the right a patient horse and a wooden cart with tall wheels stand on a slight rise. A man in blue
smock rests in the cart, another kneels on the ground, perhaps mending a wheel and a woman stands to the left. Another horse and cart
approach in the centre of the composition and there is a view through to lovely open countryside behind.
The group on the right may be based on a watercolour study ‘
A Horse and Cart’
(National Gallery of Ireland, Catalogue No.3505). In several
of his French paintings, Hone worked in series, painting three or more versions of the same subject
(2)
, sometimes working from a sketch
to the finished picture, sometimes including a small number of figures and farm animals at work or at rest, as if one picture is linked to
another and a quite narrative is created.
‘Dans les Vignes’
is thus one of three such vineyard paintings on similar sized canvases, each con-
taining peasant workers and horse and cart, but observed from different viewpoints. In another picture of ‘
Dans les Vignes’
, for example,
(inscribed ‘July 1867’ on reverse; formerly Jameson collection)
(3)
also shows people at work and a horse and cart. The painting is notable by
warm green and brown colouring. A second picture,
‘Mending the Wheel of a Farm Cart’
(NGI Catalogue No. 1460) is almost a reverse image
of the Adam’s painting, wherein the artist is looking back at the scene from over the hill, so that the horse and cart are on the left and the
trees on the right, with the vine workers visible in the distance. A similar man rests in the cart, but a woman sits in the shade of the trees.
The prominence given to the figures in the present picture, women in white blouses, men in blue smocks, lit up by bright sunlight, and
painted quite boldly, even roughly, in the Barbizon manner, is striking. Moreover, Hone’s use of brushwork is varied, experimental, even
awkward in his early French canvases, bold and vigorous in some places, loose and fluid in others. Most characteristic of Hone are the
glowing white clouds above the horizon and the beautifully painted ‘vignette’ in the centre of the composition, with its green grass, ochre
tracks and horse and cart approaching. The small signature in squared letters is different from the cursive signature of some later paint-
ings. The picture is contained in an attractive, quite shallow gilded frame, with the small label bearing the Salon number ‘759’ still affixed
to the upper edge.
Hone sent
‘Dans les Vignes
’, along with
‘La Mare aux Fees’ (The Fairy Marsh)
, to the Paris Salon, the largest and most prestigious exhibition
in Europe, from his Paris address in 1867. His pictures were praised there by the eminent French painter, writer and art historian Eugene
Fromentin
(4)
.
‘Dans les Vignes’
was purchased by the brothers Victor Cossé (1831-1903, an exact contemporary of Hone’s) and Dominique
Cossé (1832-1892), members of a prominent family involved in the sugar industry in Nantes. Their company was called Cossé Duval and
they supplied sugar to wine producers in the Champagne region and Dominique was one of the founders of the Société des Agriculteurs
de France in 1867. Victor was patron to the sculptor Charles Augusta Lebourg and both brothers were patrons of the arts, collecting paint-
ings relating to the wine industry.
Although many Irish artists exhibited works at the Paris Salon, it was quite rare for paintings to be bought by the French State for its mu-
seums, and even rarer for them to be purchased by French private collectors. It is coincidental that Hone’s
‘Dans les Vignes’
was bought by
exact contemporaries of his and it has an unbroken provenance, remaining in the same French family collection for almost one hundred
and fifty years. Equally, it is fortuitous that it should appear on the market back in Hone’s home country of Ireland, exactly one hundred
and fifty years after it was exhibited at the Paris salon, and one hundred years after the artist’s death in 1917.
Julian Campbell, April 2017
(A Centenary essay on Nathaniel Hone,
‘Time and Tide’
, is published in the Irish Arts Review, Spring 2017).
1. Lhermitte’s ‘Vendage’ painting, in ‘Barbizon, Realist and French Landscape Painting’, Christie’s, New York, 24th May 1989, lot 305. Other pictures include
‘Vendages sur les Bordes de la Seine’, c.1862 by Constant Troyan (Musée d’Orsay) and ‘Landscape with Vintage’, 1862 by F. Waldmuller (NG, Prague).
2. As, for instance, Hone’s series ‘The Road to Bourron’; ‘The Fairy Marsh’; ‘Feeding the Pigeons, Barbizon; and ‘On the Banks of the Seine’.
3. ‘Dans les Vignes’ in Irish Art, Taylor de Vere’s, Dublin, 14th December 2003, lot 4.
4. Information communicated by Dr. Barbara Wright, see ‘Nathaniel Hone the Younger’, 1991, page 39 & 43, note 28.
NATHANIEL HONE RHA (1831-1917)
‘Dans Les Vignes’