Hone, Nathaniel (
b Dublin, 24 Apr. 1718;
d London, 14 Aug. 1784). Irish portrait painter (he began his career as a miniaturist), who settled permanently in London after studying in Italy, 1750–2, and became a foundation member of the
Royal Academy in 1768. He is now remembered mainly for one painting,
The Conjurer (1775, NG, Dublin), in which he satirized
Reynolds's practice of borrowing poses from the Old Masters. The picture was accepted at the RA, but was withdrawn after Angelica
Kauffmann (whose name had been linked romantically with Reynolds's) objected that a nude figure in the background was meant to represent her. ( Hone painted out the nude figures, but they can be seen in his sketch for the picture (Tate, London).) In protest at the removal of his painting Hone exhibited it in a one-man show in St Martin's Lane, the first of its kind recorded in Britain. Hone's sons
Horace (
c.1755–1825) and
Camillus (1759–1836) were also painters, as was a brother,
Samuel (1726–?). Camillus was the subject of some of his father's best portraits.
Evie Hone (
b Dublin, 22 Apr. 1894;
d Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, 13 Mar. 1955), a direct descendant of a brother of Nathaniel, was one of the greatest stained-glass designers of the 20th century. Her masterpiece is the huge east window of Eton College Chapel, commissioned in 1949 to replace glass destroyed in the Second World War and completed in 1952. The subjects are
The Crucifixion and
The Last Supper. Sir Nikolaus
Pevsner (
The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire, 1960) describes the window as ‘a triumph for the authorities of Eton, which refused to be satisfied with the anaemic glass put into so many churches of England before and after the Second World War. Here is bold, vigorous design and strong, glowing colour.’
