Francis Danby

Life
1793-1861; b. Ireland, went to London 1813; ARA, 1825; left England due to domestic troubles and settled near Lake of Geneva, 1829-41; excelled as painter of ideal and poetic landscapes, among which Sunset at Sea after a Storm (1824) and The Departure of Ulysses from Ithaca (1854). ODNB BREF

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References
Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson); b. at St John’s, nr. Killinick, Co. Wexford; ed. Dublin Society Schools [RDS]; visited England with James O’Connor and George Petrie in 1824, and never returned; enormously successful for some years exhibiting landscapes, cataclysmic biblical scenes, etc. at RHA; returned to England after living in France and Switzerland during the 1830s, but never to the same success; won prize to great acclaim at International Exposition in Paris, 1855. Ill., Liensfjord Lake in Norway, oil, c.1840; V&A. Bibl., Eric Adams, Francis Danby (London 1973).

W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this ed. 1984), Francis Danby (1793-1861), ed. RDS, emigrated to Bristol; classical themes include Venus Arising from the Sea, Three Sisters of Phaeton, The Embarkation of Cleopatra, and three scenes from the Odyssey. [?125]

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Notes
Portrait of Francis Danby by Chris. Moore; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits [Exhibition Cat.] (Ulster Museum 1965).

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