Robert Crone, Landscape Painter
(d. 1779)
Landscape Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born in Dublin and learned the rudiments of his art under Robert West in the George's Lane School, where he obtained prizes in 1748 and 1750. He was also a pupil of Robert Hunter (q.v.), and of Philip Hussey (q.v.), to whom he was related. Hussey sent him to Italy in 1760. He studied in Rome for a time under Richard Wilson, and was much employed in procuring prints for Dublin connoisseurs and collectors. On his leaving Rome he settled in London and sent two landscape drawings to the exhibition of the Society of Artists in 1768, and was a contributor to the Royal Academy from 1770 to 1778, sending in all thirty-six landscapes, many of them drawings. In 1770 he sent a "Landscape and Figures" to the Irish Society of Artists, his only contribution to a Dublin exhibition. Crone was of small stature and deformed; from his youth he suffered from epilepsy which impeded his progress in his profession, impaired his health and finally caused his death while still a young man. He died in the early part of the year 1779. His pictures, many of them painted in imitation of Claude, were much esteemed. He did many drawings in black and white chalk on bluish-grey paper. One of his, at the time, most famous pictures was "The Ship Cabin," painted in Italy for Lord Boyne, representing Owen McSwiney, Robert Wood and others in the cabin of the yacht in which Lord Boyne sailed to the Levant. It belonged to the Right Hon. Nathaniel Clements.
« Joachim Croker, or Crocker | Contents and Search | Stephen Crowe »