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Percy French (1854-1920) Winter Landscapesigned lower left and inscription on reverse reads:’Sketched by Percy French in the drawing room at Tullylagan Manor after a
drive to Dungiven to give an entertainment. The road was almost impassable with frozen snow.
Driven in T.MacGregor’s motor car by T.MacG,’
watercolour
16.25 x 26cm (6 x 10in)
Provenance:
Cynthia O’ Connor Gallery, Dublin (label verso)
Private Collection
Exhibited:
19th and early 20th Century Irish Paintings: Cynthia O’Connor Gallery, Dublin 1982, Catalogue No.13
€3,000-4,000 (£2,343-3,125)
William Percy French was born in County Roscommon in 1854. He grew up in Derby before being sent to school in Derry as prepa-
ration for entering Trinity College, Dublin. There he studied engineering and for seven years he worked as an engineer spending
his spare time sketching and composing songs. He then abandoned his chosen career to pursue his artistic interests and in addition
to painting he wrote stories, verse and libretti for a musical comedy, a comic opera and a full opera, all of which were produced in
Dublin. He is best remembered for his atmospheric watercolour paintings of Irish bogs and skies, typically painted using a ‘wet-on-
wet’ technique. His work as both an artist and popular entertainer is commemorated by the Percy French Society, which was formed
in the 1980s, and which has a collection of some eighty watercolours by French on permanent display in the North Down Heritage
Centre.