Life
1718-84 [‘The Elder’]; b. Dublin, 24 April; son of a Wood Quay
merchant and treasurer of the Eustace St. Presbyterian Congreg. Chapel; family from
Holland; probably self-taught; first met with as itinerant portrait painter
in England; m. 1742, and settled in London with propertied wife; studied
in Italy, 1750-52; practised successfully in London as portraitist in
oils and miniature; fnd-member RHA, 1768; his picture Pictorial Conjurer, Displaying the Whole Art of Optical Deception (1775), removed as ridiculing Sir Joshua Reynolds and containing nude
figure of caricature of Angelica Kaufmann - painted out in the canvas at NGI;
arranged his own private show in London to show The Conjurer, along with 70 other works, called the first independent show exhibition
in London; also
Piping Boy (1769; NGI); d. 14 Aug., 44 Rathbone Place, London. DNB DIB BREF FDA
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography [entry by W G Strickland]. Hone’s diary is British Library MS 1752-3, 44, 024-5. Hone sent to RA a satirical painting showing Grose
and Theophilus Forrest as two Franciscan friars regaling themselves with
punch in Two Gentlemen in Masquerade, one stirring the liquid with
a crucifix, but was persuaded to replace it with a ladle for the exhibition,
and later restored it; in 1774. The Conjurer satirises Reynold’s
plagiarism of Van Dyck and the classical painters, and suggests that Reynolds
had formed an intimacy with Angelica Kaufmann (Cruickshank, p.48); refused
by RA in spite of alterations; Hone held retrospective at 70, Martin’s
Lane, with exhibits totalling more than 100, the catalogue being a defence
and justification of his achievement; jealous hot-temper not forgotten
by Nollekens and others; exhibited again at RA; moved to house in Pall
Mall formerly occupied by Jervas and Astley; ‘kept a famous black
woman in it as his model’; at the posthumous sale of his paintings,
J T Smith noticed Reynolds ‘most attentively view the picture of
The Conjurer for full ten minutes’.
Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983); probably trained in Dublin before going to England in 1742; best known at first as enamel miniaturist; influenced by Dutch art, using Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro; founder Royal Academician, but left after the rejection of his satire on Reynolds (The Conjuror, 1775, NGI), in which he ridiculed contemporary taste for Italian art; had one of the earliest recorded one-man shows; self-portraits and portraits of his children justly famous. See also Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, p.322. NOTE, The Conjurer, rep. BREF, p.118 facing.
See also Ann Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1600-1860 [Catalogue] (1969), p.47-48 and Crookshank, Portrait Exhibition [Cat.] (Ulster Museum 1965) [self-port of Hone].
RTE, Sunday Miscellany (14 Aug. 1994): The Reynolds painting shows the painter
with a book, ‘The Contagious Paintings of the Masters’, with examples flying from it; it is possible that the figure of Kaufmann was the girl originally by the Conjurer’s side, and that Kaufmann and he wished it extirpated because of the suggestion of a relationship between them; the original of the doctored painting is in the National Gallery, Dublin, while the sketch is in London.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)