Bank of wildflowers

Born in Belfast, Nicholl was apprenticed to a newspaper printer before the politician Sir James Emerson Tennent encouraged his artistic potential. Tennent’s patronage enabled Nicholl to live in London between 1830 and 1832, where he studied and copied paintings at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Moving back to Ireland, this time to Dublin, where he was based through 1840, the artist exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and developed the distinctive mode seen here while also making watercolor views of Ireland. Wildflowers—poppies, daisies, and small blue flowers (cornflowers or flax)—screen a low view of a distant coastline, perhaps in County Wicklow. Nicholl imaginatively combines botanical painting with landscape, and the image’s slightly surreal quality may derive from his lack of academic training.