Bartholomew Colles Watkins RHA (1833 - 1891)
Driving Cattle, Upper Lake, Killarney
Oil on canvas, 85 x 119cm (33½ x 46¾'')
Signed and dated 1869

 

Bartholomew Colles Watkins, described by...

Bartholomew Colles Watkins RHA (1833 - 1891)
Driving Cattle, Upper Lake, Killarney
Oil on canvas, 85 x 119cm (33½ x 46¾'')
Signed and dated 1869

 

Bartholomew Colles Watkins, described by Julian Campbell as the most prominent Irish academic landscapist of the second half of the nineteenth century, was born in Dublin in 1833, the son of Joseph Dowsley Watkins and his wife Louisa Jane.

 

He attended the RDS schools where he was awarded a medal in 1849. As a young man and while living in Dublin he made regular painting trips to the surrounding counties specialising in river landscapes in the Romantic tradition of James Arthur O'Connor. By the late 1850s he had begun visiting the south west of the country, particularly West Cork and Kerry. Julian Campbell notes that he was inspired by the dramatic scenery around Glengarriff, Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe and the Mangerton Mountains. The present work, painted in 1869 is a view in the Gap of Dunloe and sees Watkins return to the Romantic tradition which he had experimented with in his younger years. In 1860 he visited Norway and was apparently inspired by its panoramic scenery. The drama of the snow-capped peaks and the brooding sprawling Kerry mountains convey a Continental feeling, and one not generally associated with the Irish landscape while the narrow winding road with the stone bridge and with the addition of the cattle drover and his herd, coupled with the roadside cottage in the distance grounds the composition, adds scale and provides a unique Co. Kerry identity.

 

Watkins' remarkable attention to detail is what sets him apart from his peers but it was this quality that Walter Strickland seemed to be critical of when he wrote 'He carefully built up his pictures, working on small portions before he touched the rest, with the result that his pictures are over-elaborated, the details too minutely painted, and are wanting in breadth and artistic feeling'.

 

We are grateful to Dr Julian Campbell, whose writings formed the basis of this note.

 

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