Irish Fiction Friday: Francis Danby: The Deluge.

Okay, we’ve cheated again. This week’s Irish ‘Fiction’ Friday is ART! (Artish Fiction Friday?) But goodness me, we need to break the rules sometimes! Francis Danby (1793-1861) was raised in Dublin, where he learned to paint. He traveled around Europe during this life and is a Romantic Era artist famous for his enormous romantic scenes, apocalyptic scenes and landscapes. Many of his paintings include fairies and nymphs such as Scene From A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1832, Oldham Art Gallery), while one of his largest paintings, The Deluge, depicts the biblical flood with an angel weeping over a dead woman. Not everyone considers an angel fantastic, but the woman is draped over a giant, one of the Nephilim from Genesis 6:1-4, showing once again how threads of cultural history and the imagination are connected across centuries and vast geographies. We really hope you love this as much as we do!

The Deluge exhibited 1840 Francis Danby 1793-1861 Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1971 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01337
The Deluge: Francis Danby 1793-1861

There’s a gallery of Danby’s art here. Very dark and lowering – we hope you don’t get the wrong impression(ist)* of Ireland from this!

*Artish Fiction Friday reserves the right to make puns along with the paint!

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