Irish painters are...well and lavishly represented in the National Collection of the State’1, wrote Thomas Bodkin in 1932 in the introduction to the 17th catalogue of the National Gallery’s oil paintings. However, the artist most ‘lavishly represented’ in the collection, Nathaniel Hone the Younger, appears only once in this catalogue, although the Gallery had acquired Hone’s huge collection on the death of his wife, Magdalene, in 1919. But a combination of administrative and legal issues meant that exhibition of the works was to continue to be the subject of debate for some considerable time. And the only work on display in the National Gallery today is the one listed by Bodkin in 1932 – Pastures at Malahide – a work not part of the major bequest but presented to the Gallery by the artist in 1907. No other artist is represented so extensively but seen so little at the National Gallery of Ireland.

Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917) was an artist of independent means who studied painting in Paris, and spent almost twenty years in France, working at Barbizon and Fontainebleau, before returning to settle in Malahide in 1872, the year of his marriage to Magdalene Jameson of the whiskey distilling family. He was an immensely prolific artist who painted for love of art rather than for income or acclaim. While in France he sent no paintings to Irish exhibitions and his work appeared only rarely in the Salons and the Royal Academy.2 This had two consequences, the first being that he was relatively unknown and unappreciated, although he was elected to membership of the RHA in 1880. Secondly, because exhibiting and selling his pictures was relatively unimportant to him, the work accumulated substantially over his long life and was held at his home at St Doulough’s, Raheny. There is also a suggestion that Mrs. Hone did not like her husband’s pictures to be sold.3

It was Bodkin’s view that Hone probably exhibited publicly under 200 works in his lifetime, and of these, not more than 100 passed into private possession. But, although educated as an engineer at Trinity College Dublin, Hone was a professional artist rather than the ‘gifted amateur’ Bodkin said many regarded him to be. Dermod O’Brien later wrote: ‘the fact that Nathaniel Hone RHA lived here was because he had means that enabled him to be independent of his brush, which was fortunate, for but a very few recognised his worth; and I doubt if there were a dozen people in Ireland during his life who knew that Hone was a very great master of watercolour painting – and no one bought his pictures.’4 The latter view is contested by Julian Campbell who indicates that Hone had a circle of admirers who bought his work, which included Hugh Lane, Sarah Purser, and John Quinn.5

Following Hone’s death in 1917, his wife inherited all his work and discussed her intentions about the future of his collection with Dermod O’Brien, who with Bodkin was on the Board of the National Gallery at the time. Although Magdalene Hone was twelve years younger than her husband, she survived him by only eighteen months, and with no children to inherit, the National Gallery was named as the main beneficiary of his work in her will. The extent of the collection caused surprise, even to those who knew Hone, and Dermod O’Brien produced a catalogue of the work which included 550 works in oil; 887 watercolours, nearly 100 of which had separate scenes painted on the back; and 17 sheets of miscellaneous studies.6

Dermod O’Brien later indicated that Mrs. Hone’s intention had been that ‘a thoroughly representative selection should be made for permanent exhibition at the National Gallery, in, if possible a room specially provided for that purpose’.7 Furthermore, he recalled that she intended ‘that the remainder should be sold to provide money for the addition of a room to the National Gallery and for the purchase of any really first rate example of his work that might come on the market.’ Unfortunately, these intentions did not translate in such a clear-cut way in the bequest that emerged following her death. Mrs. Hone bequeathed to the Governors and Guardians her husband’s ‘paintings and pictures at St. Doulough’s...such paintings and pictures to be selected by William George Jameson’, with Dermod O’Brien and James Wilcox to act as advisors to him. Jameson was Magdalene Hone’s brother and the will stipulated that if any questions arose on the bequest, the decision be left to him. She also left £1,500 towards equipment and the provision of the special room or towards the erection of a special room elsewhere in connection with the National Gallery, and ‘I desire that all the said paintings, works and pictures shall be exclusively placed in such room’.8

Problems with gifts and bequests are nothing new and conditions attaching to them can cause major problems for beneficiaries. Homan Potterton, a former director of the Gallery, recalls that while the Milltown Gift, presented by Lady Milltown in memory of her late husband, was among the most important in the history of the Gallery, negotiations on it were protracted and not always cordial.9 However, in the case of the Hone Bequest, the issue seems to have been that Bodkin, Dermod O’Brien and others felt that the Gallery was to be effectively in the position of selecting the works they wanted, and the remainder sold, with the proceeds providing additional accommodation for the Gallery.10 The Gallery was informed of the bequest by W G Jameson on 12 December 1921. He had selected 213 oils, 341 watercolours and 84 pages of drawings and listed these. He was prepared to hand them over, subject to the purchase by the Gallery of frames. The terms outlined included the provision and equipment by him and his fellow Trustees of a special room, or appropriation of such a room elsewhere. However, the terms did not refer to the sale of the remaining pictures with the income from sales to go towards providing a room for the Gallery.

The Director of the National Gallery was authorised by the Board to receive the bequest in December 1921, but the Gallery does not appear to have given Jameson a formal detailed receipt stating that they had accepted the pictures in satisfaction of the bequest.11 The direction of the Gallery at this point was in the hands of Robert Langton Douglas and relations between him and the Board were difficult. He lived in London and his job was a part-time one with his attendance at the Gallery erratic. This may partly account for the inertia and delay in finalising the bequest, but the Civil War in 1922 resulted in the closure of the Gallery for a period, and while the bequest emerged from time to time, it failed to get on the agenda.
Before the Gallery formally received the bequest, an exhibition of a portion of it had been held in the summer of 1921 in two rooms of the Milltown Wing. In his foreword to the catalogue, O’Brien intimated that ‘legal questions’ had delayed carrying out the terms of the will, and that there was little prospect of providing additional accommodation in the immediate future. In his address at the opening, on 9 May, he said that when Mrs. Hone expressed the wish that the pictures selected for the National Gallery should, if possible, be kept together in a room or gallery built for that purpose with money left by her, she did not realise the size such a room would have to be, nor the cost of construction.12 Furthermore, no provision was made in her will for the destination of the works not selected for the National Gallery. Ninety oils and ninety-nine watercolours were included in this exhibition, the latter having never been seen before because Hone regarded them as ‘mere working notes’ or sketches. O’Brien also indicated that it had been Mrs. Hone’s intention that smaller groups of her husband’s studies should be made ‘for loan to the various towns in Ireland where were established schools of art with galleries for the exhibition of pictures.’

A request from Belfast Public Art Gallery for a loan of works was agreed by the Board of the Gallery in the same year, subject to the consent of the Hone Trustees. However later in 1921 the proposed exhibition in Belfast was postponed, ‘in view of the unrest which prevails.’13 A request for a loan by Cork County Borough Technical Instruction Committee in 1921 had been rejected on grounds of the ‘unsettled state of the country’ and another gallery (presumably Belfast) having a prior claim.14 The news was dominated by political unrest and violence in the summer of 1921, but the Irish Times expressed the hope that the public would take the opportunity to become familiar with the work of the artist, ‘and here in these quiet and peaceful rooms, seek for the moment to forget the strife and turmoil with which our country is distracted.’15

The Belfast exhibition was finally held in July 1925, with works lent by the National Gallery and Dermod O’Brien, acting for the Hone Trustees. The foreword, by Arthur Deane, repeated Mrs. Hone’s intentions that works should be sent on loan to various towns in Ireland, but now with a more general aspiration: ‘for the benefit of art students and art lovers.’16 Included were 153 works, of which 100 were watercolours, and 73 of the total shown were lent by Dermod O’Brien, in whose house many of the pictures not shown in the National Gallery in 1921 had been put on display. It was agreed by the Board of the National Gallery, following a request from some Northern Ireland towns, that Hone pictures could be lent to small centres inside or outside the Free State at the discretion of Dermod O’Brien and the Director.17 However, the Gallery had no formal authority to lend at this time and it was not until 1928 that the National Gallery of Ireland Bill provided authority for the Gallery ‘to hold public exhibitions of pictures selected by them from the pictures in the National Gallery which belong to the ...Governors and Guardians, and to lend them for exhibitions inside or outside Saorstat Eireann.’

The issue then seems to have been in abeyance until 1929 when Bodkin had taken over as director. He wrote to W G Jameson, saying that they had been informally told by Dermod O’Brien that Jameson ‘had entered into an agreement with the residuary legatees under the will to sell the residue of the oils and drawings...and to apportion the proceeds between the residuary legatees and the fund bequeathed by Mrs. Hone for the purpose of housing and exhibiting the selected works...in a small gallery at or on the precincts of the National Gallery.’18 Bodkin seems to have been applying his legal and administrative skills to the matter and requests a list of works given to the Gallery so that a formal receipt can be issued. He wanted a list of the pictures retained by Jameson for sale, and a statement of the terms under which he proposes to conduct such a sale, as well as information on those sold to date, and on agreements reached with residual legatees. He also requested a statement from Jameson on the present state of the fund bequeathed by Mrs. Hone ‘for the purpose of augmenting present accommodation at the Gallery’.

An extension to the Gallery had long been a concern of Bodkin’s and each year following his appointment as director in 1927, his annual reports draw attention to this need. More space was required, not just to accommodate the Hone Bequest pictures but for general requirements in view of the expansion of the collection. However, his appeals to Government were unsuccessful in times of severe economic stringency, and he resigned in 1935 without a conclusion to this or to the issue of the Hone Bequest. An exhibition of Hone’s pictures was held in 1937 at the Victor Waddington Gallery, and in the foreword to the catalogue, J Crampton Walker pointed out that the National Gallery had a magnificent collection bequeathed by Hone’s widow, and although Hone had died twenty years before, ‘the Irish public have no opportunity of seeing them, as none are on exhibition in either of the Dublin Galleries.’19
The matter seems once more to have gone below the threshold at the National Gallery and did not emerge again until 1946. Dermod O’Brien died on 3 October 1945, and in December his family provided a list of pictures found in his studio at 65 Fitzwilliam Square to a firm of solicitors doing an audit of the numbers of pictures sold or handed over to the National Gallery and other legatees.20 The pictures were sent to the RHA and included a parcel of about one hundred and eight sketches marked ‘Reserved for the National Gallery’.21 W G Jameson had also died and the Registrar of the Gallery provided an audit of their pictures to Craig Gardner. This indicates that the Gallery held 212 oil paintings and 337 watercolours, 105 of which were double-sided. This was one oil painting and three watercolours short of their own lists but the registrar recalled that Dermod O’Brien had some difficulty in accounting for the complete total. What seems to have happened is that a challenge had emerged to the Executors and the National Gallery by Hone legatees on grounds that the Gallery had not provided a special room in which to hang the pictures. The Gallery indicated that ‘while the Board are anxious to hang the Hone pictures in a special room, they do not admit that there is a legal obligation as a condition to their benefiting under the Will. The Board would in the circumstances desire to have their legal obligations defined by the Court.’22

The dispute concerned the sum of money left to build a Hone Room at the National Gallery and it seems that the challenge had arisen because while Magdalene Hone’s will provided for legacies amounting to £31,630, the assets were insufficient to pay these in full. 23 The case against the Gallery was that the gift had failed because the room was not provided within a reasonable time, and this could not now be approved by the Trustees, all of whom were dead. The legacy of £1,500 therefore fell into residue. Furthermore, the Hone family was entitled to benefit from the sale of remaining pictures, which now belonged to the legatees rather than the National Gallery. However, the family’s solicitors wanted a friendly agreement on the matter. If a room could not be provided, there was a suggestion that a wall or substantial section of the Gallery should be used ‘for immediate and permanent display’ of a suitable number of pictures to be retained by them. If this were acceptable to the Gallery, the Hones would forego all claims to any pictures retained by the Gallery and waive all claims to the £1,500 legacy. Otherwise they wanted returned to them all the pictures not required for exhibition, all pictures held by Dermod O’Brien, and payment to them of the proceeds of picture sales.24

The case was heard on 24 February 1948 and the outcome was that the Gallery was entitled to retain the pictures it held, but to nothing else, and the bequest of £1,500 was judged to have failed.25 It was not until 1951, thirty years after the Gallery had been informed of the bequest, that terms were finally settled, and 208 oils and 336 watercolours were permanently registered in the Gallery.

It was to be another forty years before a major exhibition of Hone’s work was held at the Gallery.26 This included 19 Hone oils held by the Gallery, including Pastures at Malahide, presented by him in 1907, and 26 watercolours from the bequest. The public has still not seen most of the collection and Mrs. Hone’s wishes for her bequest to the Irish nation have not been fully realised. Even with a major extension to the Gallery, no Hone Room has emerged, and each generation of board and management has inherited the problem of how to deal with exhibiting even a proportion of such a large collection. Perhaps the time is right now to consider the possibility of providing long-term loans of some of the Hone collection to regional galleries. A number of local museums, operating at a high level of curatorial value, have now been formally designated to receive objects from the national collections, including the National Museum. Lending pictures to such museums would not only enrich local collections for the benefit of the public, but would also finally address another of Magdalene Hone’s expressed intentions for the collection. Her generosity and her husband’s status as an artist deserve nothing less.

Dr Anne Kelly is director of Arts Administration Studies at University College Dublin. She writes and lectures on cultural policy issues and co-edited From Maestro to Manager: Critical Issues in Arts and Cultural Management. She is currently writing a book on Thomas Bodkin and Irish cultural policy.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Leah Benson, Archives Department of the National Gallery, the staff of the National Gallery Library, and Peter Kenny of the National Library Manuscripts Department.

1 National Gallery of Ireland, Catalogue of Oil Pictures in the General Collection, Dublin: Stationery Office, 1932.
2 Thomas Bodkin, Four Irish Landscape Painters, Dublin and London, 1920; 2nd ed., Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987, 53.
3 Homan Potterton, ‘Nathaniel Hone and John Quinn: a correspondence’, Brian P Kennedy ed., Art is My Life: A Tribute to James White, Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1991, 136.
4 Dermod O’Brien, ‘The Churches’ neglect of Irish Art’, Commentary: Art, Drama, Literature, V.1.No.5, 1942.
5 Julian Campbell, Nathaniel Hone the Younger, Dublin: The National Gallery of Ireland, 1991, 62.
6 Thomas Bodkin, Four Irish Landscape Painters, 56.
7 Dermod O’Brien, Foreword, Catalogue of a Portion of the Bequest made by the late Mrs. Hone to the National Gallery of Ireland and there exhibited during the summer of 1921.
8 NGI, Hone Bequest 1921, Extract from Will of Magdalene Hone, 31 January 1919.
9 Homan Potterton, Introduction, National Gallery of Ireland Illustrated Summary Catalogue of Paintings, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981, xxiv.
10 Homan Potterton, Introduction, National Gallery of Ireland Illustrated Summary Catalogue of Drawings, Watercolours and Miniatures, 1983.
11 NGI Hone Bequest 1929/30 Thomas Bodkin to W G Jameson, April 1929.
12 Dermod O’Brien, quoted in ‘The Hone Bequest: Exhibition of Pictures at the National Gallery’, Freeman’s Journal, May 10, 1921.
13 NGI Hone Bequest III A Deane to Langton Douglas, 26 November 1921.
14 NGI Hone Bequest IV Cork County Borough Technical Instruction Committee to NGI, 18th November 1921 and note 15th December 1921.
15 W.C.G, ‘A Great Irish Painter’, the Irish Times, May 10, 1921.
16 Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Nathaniel Hone at City & County Borough of Belfast Art Gallery and Museum, July 1925.
17 NGI, Board Minutes 1 July 1925.
18 NGI, Hone Bequest 1929/30, Thomas Bodkin to W G Jameson, April 1929.
19 J Crampton Walker, Foreword, Catalogue of Exhibition of Pictures by the late Nathaniel Hone RHA at Victor Waddington Galleries April 1937.
20 NLI Dermod O’Brien papers 36906/2 French and French to Mrs. O’Brien.
21 NLI Dermod O’Brien papers 36906/2 ms 5 January 1946.
22 NGI Hone Bequest 1946-50, George Furlong to French and French, Solicitors, 5 December 1946.
23 NGI Hone Bequest 1946-50, Director to Finance Solicitor, 24th May 1947. Probate of the will of Magdalene Hone was calculated at £39,774. National Archives, Will of Magdalene Hone, 31 January 1919.
24 NGI Hone Bequest 1946-50 R H Beauchamp & Orr to Finance Solicitor, 9 December 1947.
25 NGI Hone Bequest 1946-50 Finance Solicitor to George Furlong, 7 July 1948.
26 Julian Campbell, Nathaniel Hone the Younger 1831- 1917, Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1991.