Donegal Bay - William Trost Richards, 1902

Richards completed this work during his extended travels to the British Isles and Ireland, painting coastal subjects with the rigorous discipline that defined his mature career. Trained initially in Philadelphia and deeply influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite commitment to precise observation of nature, Richards had by the 1890s and early 1900s refined his attention to the sea into something close to scientific fidelity, though always in service of mood. His Irish coastal paintings belong to a tradition of Romanticism that prizes the sublime over the picturesque: the landscape is powerful, indifferent and grand rather than inviting. The craggy silhouette of the mountain against the cloud-streaked sky carries this feeling distinctly, placing Donegal Bay in the same visual register as the Irish coastal work of contemporaries working in the sublime mode. Richards exhibited widely during his lifetime and his coastal paintings are held in several American collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, institutions that recognised his ability to render moving water with a conviction few of his peers matched.