SOLOMON DELANE (c. 1727-1812) A Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
Oil painting on copper Unframed: 19a x 26ain (49.5 x 67cm) Framed: 25e x 32ein (65.5 x 83cm)
Solomon Delane was born in County Tipperary, the son of a Clergyman, Richard and his wife Sarah. He was brought up in Dublin, and received his training in the Dublin Schools under West, where he also attended the School of Landscape and Ornament under James Mannin. Delane won a prize at the Dublin Society in 1750, when he was placed second in the order of merit. About this time his father and brother Richard both died, leaving Delane with a comfortable income from a family portfolio of property in Dublin and elsewhere. Soon afterwards Delane set out on his first Grand Tour to Italy, arriving in Rome in 1755. Much of the next fifteen years were spent in and around the Eternal City, where he developed a distinctive and highly sophisticated landscape style which owes more to the refinements of the seventeenth century, and particularly to Claude Lorraine, than it does to the Romantic topography of his own age. In 1763 he was elected a
Solomon Delane, circa 1727-1812, Italianate Landscape (National Gallery of Ireland)
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member of the Society of Artists in London, and in 1766 was sending landscapes for exhibition at the Dublin Society of Artists. In July 1777 he was elected as a member of the Academia di Disegno in Florence – just a few months after his friend Hugh Primrose Dean had been awarded the same signal honour. Two years later, Delane went on a painting tour of Germany with the Hon. Aubrey and Lady Catherine Beauclerk. Father Thorpe compared his work favourably to his compatriot James Forrester noting that Delane ‘contends with him for excellence and…is much more expeditious in his work. I know of no one in Rome who is equal to either in this kind of painting’. Delane was noted by many correspondents on the Grand Tour during the years to 1780, and he sold pictures to some of the most distinguished of them, including Nathaniel Dance's client Lord Charles Hope, the Earl of Upper Ossory and Hugh Percy Lord Warworth. The emergence of a group of Irish
Nathaniel Dance, 1735-1811, Portrait of Solomon Delane (Nottingham Castle)
painters in Rome, with Delane at its centre, was noted by James Martin: ‘Mr Delane is a Landskip Painter & has made good progress in his Art’; a week later Martin wrote further: ‘Mr Crone, Mr Delane and Mr Forester the only persons from our Part of the World who practice Landskip-painting are all Irish’. In 1780 he was back in London where he exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy between 1782 and 1784. Delane died in 1812, back home in Dublin where he had lived for the last two decades of his life. Closely comparable to works by Delane in the National Gallery of Ireland (fig) and
in a private collection, the present painting shows the cool silvery tonality which is the hallmark of his style, ultimately derived from Claude. It is one of two known painters by the artist which are on copper, and may be dated to about 1772 when Delane was sharing accommodation in Rome with his fellow artist Hugh Primrose Dean. Dean also painted a Flight into Egypt on a copper support at about this date and, as discussed above, it is likely that the two works were painted by these Irish friends in Italy in competition one to another, with each showcasing a particular aspect of their art. No doubt, Delane’s attraction to this
particular subject was heightened by the fact that the Flight into Egypt had been a favourite of Claude and other classicising artists of the seventeenth century.
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