DANBY, Francis

Irish painter. He was a landowner’s son and studied art at the Dublin Society. In 1813 he visited London, then worked in Bristol, initially on repetitious watercolours of local scenes: for example, View of Hotwells, the Avon Gorge (c. 1818; Bristol, Museum and Art Gallery). Around 1819 he entered the cultivated circle of George Cumberland (1754-1849) and the Rev. John Eagles (1783-1855). Danby’s discovery of the ‘poetry of nature’ in local scenery and insignificant incident was influenced by the theories of Eagles, published as The Sketcher (1856), and, less directly, by those of William Wordsworth, who had been associated with Bristol earlier in the century.

Danby’s distinctive work began with the small panel paintings he produced for his Bristol audience. Boy Sailing a Little Boat (c. 1822; Bristol, Museum and Art Gallery) recalls the rustic scenes of William Collins and the Bristol artist Edward Villiers Rippingille, but Danby emphasized the effect of sun and shade rather than sentiment.

Danby worked mainly in Bristol and London, but between 1829 and 1841, owing to financial and marital problems, he settled in Switzerland. He is remembered mainly for his bombastic apocalyptic paintings, which were a direct challenge to John Martin. However, his best works are now usually considered to be the romantic sunset landscapes of his later years, with their mood of melancholy and solemn serenity (Temple of Flora, Tate Gallery, London, 1840).

Scene from the Apocalypse

After attending the drawing school of the Royal Dublin Society and spending a brief period in London, Danby settled around 1813 for two decades in Bristol, in whose environs he painted the small, exquisite landscapes on which his fame today largely rests. Forced to leave England in 1829 due to financial problems and a marital scandal, Danby established himself in Paris and Geneva, where he remained until 1840. His oils, ink drawings, and watercolours, focussing on lyrically romantic landscapes, represents one of the most significant contributions made by any artist to nineteenth-century British landscape painting. He also concerned himself with religious themes, treated in a visionary manner.

The present painting is presumably one of four depicting scenes from the Apocalypse. In a Romantic nocturnal landscape evoking the infinity of the cosmos appears a vision of the giant angel described in Chapter 10 of the Apocalypse, descending in a cloud from heaven with a rainbow over his head and legs like columns of fire. The natural scene in which the visionary apparition is set evinces a coloration and sophisticated painterly handling that explain Danby’s rank as one of the finest British landscapists of the nineteenth century.

Scene from the Apocalypse

The Broken Bridge