Bartholomew Colles Watkins R.H.A. 1833-1891

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Gap of Dunloe, Killarney—Study from Nature

Oil on canvas laid on wood, 23 x 33 cm.

Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1870, no. 168

Born into an artistic family in Dublin in 1833, Watkin entered the Royal Dublin Society School in 1847. He developed a successful practice as a landscape painter exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy regularly from 1860 and also showing in London, sending three views of Killarney to the Royal Academy. Indeed he made something of a speciality of painting Irish mountain scenery and views of Connemara, and in particular Kerry predominate in his oeuvre, though views of Dublin Bay are also known. Watkins was elected an Associate of the RHA in 1861 and a full member three years later, taking an active interest in the Academy’s affairs and acting as secretary for a period. In addition to painting in Ireland, exhibits at the RHA suggest a trip to Norway in about 1860. Watkins died on a sketching trip to Kerry. As Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin write: ‘the dangers landscape painters undertook are illustrated by his…tragic death from pneumonia in 1891. The railways had by this time opened up the furthermost fastness of the west of Ireland but they had not reached the coast. As a result when Watkins was taken ill twenty miles from the rail head, he died before medical help could reach him’. In these exquisite Kerry views he shows his technical mastery by combining a monumentality of vision with a microscopic attention to detail.