Adam's IRISH OLD MASTERS 5th November 2024

Irish Old Masters| 5 November 2024 www.adams.ie 93 On one of his final trips to Norway, Danby visited his friend and fellow artist John King (1788-1847) at Bergen. The artist was a leading figure of the Bristol School and Danby painted views of Bergen. Danby was profoundly affected by his visits to Norway, which shaped much of his later work. Gibbons’s portrait of Danby (Bristol Museum & Art Gallery), exhibited in 1829, presents the artist sketching a landscape high in the Norwegian mountains; presumably how Danby wished himself to be seen, suggested Adams. The present, rediscovered work is the earliest known version of one of Danby’s most famous compositions, The Fisherman’s Home , produced shortly before its exhibition in the Art Union in 1846. The oil painting, depicted steps leading to a thatched house built into a rocky mound of land, shaped by the sea, with fishermen carrying nets. The rediscovered Fisherman’s Home was the painting seen and reported by the Art Jour - nal, and appeared in 1852 edition. According to the article, the painting was based on a version of the same picture that was part of the Vernon Collection, gifted to the Na - tional Gallery in 1871, and transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1897. Fisherman’s Home is rooted in the typically idyllic images of the Romantic Irish landscape. These works all feature stormy skies, infused with the tranquil beauty of the rural West Coast.