A glimpse of Nathaniel Hone’s Orient

Nathaniel Hone: Travels of a Landscape Artist

National Gallery of Ireland 
23 February–1 December 2019

After Nathaniel Hone the younger died in 1917 his wife donated to the National Gallery some 500 works of art: it took until the 1950s to catalogue them all. Most of us have an image of Hone as the creator of pastoral scenes of the east of Ireland; Pastures at Malahide (1907) has long been a favourite with visitors to the Gallery.

This small exhibition is intended to give a glimpse of another aspect of his work, his painting of scenes in Europe, but also in the Near East, that other east. The pictures on display are a small taste of what is a rich hoard of work.

The European scenes  are interesting, but it is the ‘oriental’ ones that  truly catch the imagination, being so very different to what we think we know about Hone. One would like to see more of them. Perhaps a show of Hone and other artists’ images of the Muslim world would be welcome; Sir John Lavery’s North African pictures come to mind.

Such a show might also provide an occasion to reconsider at long last the views of Edward Said on ‘Orientalism’, so readily accepted by many critics