c.1867
Oil on Canvas
59 x 88cm
1838-P
Acquired 1998
The key industries in Cork during this period brewing, provisioning, flour-milling and ship-building were based on the rich agricultural hinterland of Cork and on the strategically important harbour, which was Ireland's main Atlantic port. Whether used for merchant shipping, assembling fleets of convict ships for Australia, or warships for the American and Peninsular Wars, the harbour's size and security made it one of the busiest ports in the world. As a result, Cork's wealth was based more on commerce than on manufacturing, the city council and corporate life being dominated by a merchant class which also controlled cultural and social life. The Atlantic trade was not only in goods. Over the years, tens of thousands of people embarked at Cork harbour for the New World. This painting of a boating party landing on Haulbowline Island shows a different aspect of the harbour a scene of social life among the privileged classes whose elegant villas and wooded demesnes ringed the harbour.
In his acute observation of weather conditions and in the accurate rendering of ships and their rigging, Atkinson may be compared with the American luminist painters Francis Silva and Fitz Hugh Lane. There are a number of works by Atkinson in the Crawford Gallery. He is also represented in the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut and in the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
1806–1884
Irish School
George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson (not to be confused with his son George Mounsey Atkinson or twentieth century artist George Atkinson), was a marine painter, born c.1806 in Cobh (then Queenstown) of English parents. As a youth he went to sea, working as a ship's carpenter, and later became Government Surveyor of Shipping and Emigrants at Queenstown, known locally as 'Captain Atkinson'. He was a self-taught artist, first signing his paintings in 1841, and first exhibiting marine paintings at the RHA from 1842. Here he showed many views of the entrance to Cork harbour, Cobh, river views, the River Lee and scenes of ships at sea until 1845. He also made copies of sketches of the Bay of Bengal and Rio de Janeiro by Major Wallis. His Visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Queenstown in 1849, was lithographed and published by W. Scraggs of Cork. He made a yachting cruise around Norway in Summer 1852 and his volume Sketches of Norway was lithographed by his son G.M. Atkinson and published by Guy Brothers, Cork.
After 1845 Atkinson only exhibited at the RHA on one more occasion, in 1879. All his children, George Mounsey, Richard Peterson, Sarah and Robert inherited his artistic talents and became painters. Atkinson lived at 3 Mervue Park, Queenstown and it was here that he died on 7th January, 1884, aged seventy-eight. Strickland remarks that "his works, though possessing little merit as pictures, show a thorough knowledge of the sea." Maguire is more sensitive to 'Captain Atkinson', "a seaman as well as an artist":-
"The marine paintings of this artist are remarkable for a thorough knowledge of his subject, his ships being faultless in every detail, and his sky and sea faithful to nature in her forms of beauty."
Ref:Gleanings on Old Cork Artists by R.D., Cork Historical and Archaeological Journal, Vol.VI, p.109-111. A Dictionary of Irish Artists by W.G. Strickland, Vol.1 Royal Hibernian Academy. Index of Exhibitors 1826-1979 by Ann M. Stewart