John Faulkner RHA (1835-1894)

The gifted Irish watercolour painter John Faulkner was born in Dublin and studied drawing and fine art painting at the Royal Dublin Society School. His precocious talent led him to begin exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1852 when he was only 17. He was elected an RHA academician at 26 and also exhibited at the Royal Academy (RA) in London.

Faulkner's earliest landscape painting depicts scenes of south County Dublin and the Wicklow coast. He had a particular skill at capturing the soft dampness of the Irish climate as can be seen in his watercolour of Slievemore, Achill Island.

He painted in oils as well as watercolours. At 25, he was sharing a studio in Henrietta Street with his fellow Irish artist Patrick Vincent Duffy. Not long afterwards he went to Scotland, where he painted both mountain landscapes and those on the western seaboard in Argyllshire.

He returned to Ireland in the late 1860s only to have his membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy cancelled for reasons which remain unclear, although according to his contemporaries Faulkner's habits and lifestyle were chaotic and irregular. However, he returned to exhibiting at the RHA in 1880, and continued until 1887.

Source:
Online Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/john-faulkner.htm

John Faulkner studied at the Royal Dublin Society's School from 1848 and commenced exhibiting at the RHA in 1852. He became an Associate member of the RHA in 1861 and full member the following autumn.



Accomplished landscapes in both oil and watercolour comprised the bulk of his exhibits with the society where he was 'esteemed as an artist of considerable power and ability' until 1870. His 'life and habits' were recorded as 'irregular' and he left Ireland in 1870 for America 'under circumstances which brought about his removal from membership of the Academy' (Strickland, Vol. I, p.340). He later settled in London and returned to exhibiting at the RHA in 1880, continuing to do so until 1887. Examples by Faulkner in oil and watercolour can be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland among other public collections in Ireland and the UK