CHATSWORTH FINE ART SALE April 29th, 30th & May 1st 2026

85 Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 “St. Marnock’s Sands and Fragment of Wreck c. 1890”O.O.C., 65cms x 98cms (25½” x 38½”), Initialled l.r. ‘N H’. (1) Provenance: Artist’s studio; Magdalene Hone; Adams, Dublin, early 1970’s; Private Collection, Dublin Adams, Dublin, Dec 2010. Lot 30
Private Collection. Exhibited: Milmo-Penny Fine Art, November 1999. Literature: Thomas Bodkin Four Irish Painters, Appendix XVI, No. 27; “St. Marnock’s Sands and Fragment of Wreck”
Dr. Julian Campbell, Nathaniel Hone the Younger 1831-1917, NGI 1991. Regarded as Ireland’s finest landscape painter of the Impressionist period, Nathaniel Hone painted many views of the countryside and coastal scenery in north county Dublin. On the 11th July 1872, shortly after his return from Barbizon in France, Hone and Magdalene Jameson were married in the parish church at Portmarnock. Magdalene’s parents, John and Anne Jameson, who lived at nearby St. Marnock’s, were to become keen collectors of Hone’s paintings. Over the following years, while the Hones lived at Donabate, Seafield in Malahide, Moldowney House near Robswalls, and then lastly at St. Doulough’s in Balgriffin, they made regular visits to Magdalene’s family home, which adjoined Portmarnock’s ‘Velvet Strand’. Nathaniel would carry his easel, paints and canvas the short distance over the sand dunes to the strand, from where he could see Howth Head, Ireland’s Eye and Lambay Island. During the nineteenth century several sailing ships, including the ‘Mailfilatre’ and ‘Gainsborough’, had been driven ashore at this point, and fragments of their wooden hulls survived in the shallows—as they do to the present day. At least four paintings by Hone feature these wrecks. One, L’Epave (The Derelict) was donated in 1908 by Sir Hugh Lane to the Musée de Luxembourg. It is now in the collection of Musée d’Orsay, where it is titled Côte d’Irlande [Cat. No. RF1980 114]. A larger version, The Derelict, loaned by the artist to the Franco-British exhibition of 1908, was also acquired by Lane, who presented to the Scottish Modern Arts Association; it was illustrated the following year in the Irish Builder. It is now in the City Art Centre, Museums & Galleries Edinburgh. Of all Hone’s paintings, St. Marnock’s Sands and Fragment of Wreck is one of his most atmospheric works. Above the sands, light and dark clouds fill the sky, with a blue patch of clear sky on the upper right. The horizon line is obscured, with any landscape in the distance hidden behind a veil of rain clouds. In the foreground, a group of children play near the dunes. A fourth painting to feature the wreck, A View towards Lambay from the Derelict, was shown at the Milmo-Penny Gallery in 2005. Born in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin, Nathaniel Hone the Younger was a descendant of the brother of the eighteenth- century painter Nathaniel Hone. After working for a period for the Midland Great Western railway company, of which his father was a director, in 1853 Hone decided to take up art. He then studied for two years in Paris, under the history painters Adolphe Yvon and Thomas Couture, before moving to Barbizon, near Fontainbleu, where he lived for many years. An active member of the Barbizon group, which included at various times Corot, Rousseau, Courbet, and Henri Harpignies, in the late 1860’s Hone exhibited both at the Salons in Paris and at the Royal Academy in London. Around 1872 he returned to Ireland, and two decades later inherited his family’s estate and farm at St. Doulough’s, Balgriffin, near Malahide. In 1880 he was elected a member of the RHA, and fourteen years later was appointed professor of painting at the Academy. Apart from annual trips to the West of Ireland, and to the Continent and Egypt, Hone remained at St. Doulough’s for the rest of his life. After his death, his widow Magdalene gifted several hundred paintings from his studio to the National Gallery. Peter Murray 2026 €15,000 - €20,000 810. Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917)