Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784)

Irish portrait painter and printmaker. Hone was a founder member of the Royal Academy in London in 1768 and an outspoken critic of its president, Joshua Reynolds. His best-known work is The Pictorial Conjuror Displaying the Whole Art of Optical Deception (1775; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). This is an attack on Reynolds and the dominance of Classical taste in opposition to which Hone promoted the naturalism of 17th-century Dutch art. He was one of the most gifted painters of children of the period; a fine example is the portrait of his son John Camillus known as The Piping Boy (1769; National Gallery of Ireland).

Hone, born in Dublin, was the first in a dynasty of Irish artists. His sons Horace (1754/6–1825) and John Camillus (1759–1836) were painters, his grandnephew Nathaniel Hone (1831–1917) was a leading Irish Impressionist, and Evie Hone a contemporary of Mainie Jellett, was an important modernist painter and stained-glass artist.