Bartholomew Colles Watkins RHA
1831 – 1891
A prominent landscape painter in the second half of the nineteenth century, Colles Watkins was born at 19 Essex Street, Dublin. His father was a glove maker, and the extended Watkins family included many artists. The artist studied at the Royal Dublin Society drawing schools, where he was awarded prizes for figure drawing in 1847 and 1848.
As a young man and while living in Dublin he made regular painting trips to the surrounding counties specialising in river landscapes in the Romantic tradition of James Arthur O’Connor. By the late 1850s he had begun visiting the south west of the country, particularly West Cork and Kerry, he was inspired by the dramatic scenery around Glengarriff, Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe and the Mangerton Mountains. Watkins’ remarkable attention to detail is what sets him apart from his peers This is reflected in his landscape paintings, which depict the rural and mountainous Irish landscape in a Romantic style.In his ‘Dictionary of Irish Artists’ (1913), Walter Strickland notes that Watkins ‘was a slow worker who carefully built up his pictures, working upon and finishing small portions before he touched the rest’. In 1891, Watkins caught a severe cold during a sketching trip to Kerry, leading to fatal congestion of the lungs. Watkins died in Upper Lauragh, Co. Kerry, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
Bartholomew Colles Watkins RHA