Andrew Nicholl RHA RUA (1804-1886) A View of Derry Through a Bank of Poppies Watercolour, 36 x 52cm (14 x 20½'') Signed Provenance: Previously in the collection of John O'Sullivan Sold in these...

Andrew Nicholl RHA RUA (1804-1886) A View of Derry Through a Bank of Poppies Watercolour, 36 x 52cm (14 x 20½'') 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 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 captivating.' This 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. The work features the fine 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. 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 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 flowers, 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 first 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. 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 illustration, 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 Andrew Nicholl. Marianne O'Kane Boal

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