Nassau Blair Browne
A landscape painter from Co. Kilkenny, Browne studied at the Slade in London and at a school of animal painting in Midhurst, Sussex. His work was included in the London Guildhall exhibition of Irish Art, which Hugh Lane organised in 1904. Browne was secretary of the RHA 1911-24 and governor of the NGI 1918-24; his administrative duties ended when he moved to England in 1924. However, he continued to send exhibits to the RHA. His stylised landscapes, though essentially academic, reveal traces of an art nouveau aesthetic. The present painting was one of his very last works and was exhibited at the RHA a few months before his death.