Francis Danby

Biography

In 1813 Francis Danby set out from Dublin for London with James Arthur O’Connor and George Petrie. The money did not last, and they had to walk home.

In Bristol they stopped. Danby found that watercolours could bring in at least small sums there, and stayed.

He was born on 16 November 1793 in the south-east of Ireland, near Wexford, one of twins. His father, James Danby, farmed a small property of his own. After his death in 1807 the family moved to Dublin, while Francis was still at school. He began drawing at the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, and learned to paint landscapes from a young and erratic artist, James Arthur O’Connor. It was then that he met George Petrie.

In Bristol Danby worked diligently and sent important pictures to the London exhibitions; his large oil paintings quickly attracted attention. From about 1818–19 he belonged to an informal circle of artists, later known as the Bristol School: evening sketching meetings and sketching excursions around the local scenery. The group had formed around Edward Bird, whose genre painting was naturalistic and fresh in colour; his influence is seen in Danby’s figures, for example in “Boys Sailing a Little Boat” (c. 1821) and “The Delivery of Israel out of Egypt” (1825). Danby was also close to Edward Villiers Rippingille, whose style developed alongside his own. Danby later became the central figure of the group himself. “View of the Avon Gorge” (1822) shows figures sketching in a spot the company especially liked. The Bristol amateurs, above all Francis Gold, nudged him toward a more imaginative, poetical manner. Another amateur, George Cumberland, had influential connections in London. When Danby showed “The Upas Tree of Java” at the British Institution in 1820, Cumberland helped the picture to a favourable reception; the correspondence shows that he also suggested subjects to the painter. Cumberland was a friend of William Blake, and Blake’s influence has been suggested for “Disappointed Love”, Danby’s second exhibited work (Royal Academy, 1821). “An Enchanted Island”, shown in 1825 at the British Institution and then in Bristol, in turn influenced other Bristol artists; Letitia Elizabeth Landon devoted a poem to it in her collection “The Troubadour” (1825).

“The Upas Tree” (1820) and “The Delivery of Israel” (1825) brought him election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. He left Bristol in 1824, but kept in touch with members of the circle for about another ten years. In London in 1828 Danby exhibited “The Opening of the Sixth Seal” at the British Institution, received a prize of 200 guineas for it, and painted two more pictures on Apocalyptic themes. His vast illusionist canvases of gloomy, fantastic subjects, which suited the Byronic taste of the 1820s, are compared with the work of John Martin.

In 1829 Danby’s wife left him for the painter Paul Falconer Poole. He left London, declaring that he would not live there again, and feeling that the Academy had treated him badly. For about ten years he lived by Lake Geneva in Switzerland, took up boatbuilding and painted only now and then; then he moved briefly to Paris.

In 1840 he returned to England, where his sons James and Thomas, both artists, were growing up. That year Danby exhibited “The Deluge”, about fifteen feet (some five metres) wide, the largest and most dramatic of his “Martinesque” visions. The success of the picture restored his reputation. His other works include “The Golden Age” (c. 1827, exhibited 1831), “Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore” (1837) and “The Evening Gun” (1848). “The Woodnymph’s Hymn to the Rising Sun” (1845) is calmer and gentler than his earlier pictures, but he returned to his early manner in “The Shipwreck” (1859). At the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris he won a prize and good reviews for a seascape.

Danby spent his last years at Exmouth in Devon. He died there in February 1861. His elder son, James Francis (1816–1875), exhibited at the Royal Academy and was good at sunrises and sunsets; the younger, Thomas (1817–1886), specialised in watercolours of Welsh scenes and in 1866 missed election as an Associate of the Academy by one vote.