The pike in the Gap of Dunloe

Detail of a rock formation called 'The Pike' at the Gap of Dunloe (Gaeilge: Bearna an Choimín), Co. Kerry, p. 207. Woodcut by John Walmsley (fl. 1839-1878) after Andrew Nicholl (1804-1886).

 

Woodcut

Published in: Ireland : its scenery, character, &c. by Mr. & Mrs. S. C. Hall, Vol. I [185-?].

Public Domain

CSIA Store

London: Hall, Virtue and Co., [185-?]

 

Andrew Nicholl was an Irish watercolourist and landscape painter. He was born 4 April 1804 in Church Lane, Belfast, the younger brother of painter William Nicholl (1794-1840). In 1822 Nicholl was apprenticed as a compositor to Belfast printer Francis Dalzell Finlay, working in the newspaper's letterpress department. He quickly established himself locally as a landscape artist and began teaching painting both in Belfast and Coleraine. He exhibited for the first time at the RHA in 1832, displaying eight watercolours of scenes in England and Ulster. Most of his work of the 1830s was topographical and antiquarian, as he made numerous sketches of castles, abbeys, and megalithic monuments throughout Ireland. Engravings of his drawings appeared in the Dublin Penny Journal and publications such as Thirteen views on the Dublin and Kingstown railway (1834), Henry O'Neill's Fourteen views in the county of Wicklow from original drawings (1835) and O'Neill's and Petrie's Picturesque sketches of some of the finest landscape and coast scenery of Ireland (1835). Notably, Nicholl was among several artists who illustrated Ireland: its scenery, character, etc. (1841-3) by Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall.