Dean, Hugh Primrose

(c.1746 - 84), landscape painter, b. Co. Down, 3rd s. of Alexander Dean of Donaghadee and Kinsale; m. 1761 Eleanor Gamble; exh. FS 1765 (from London); exh. SA 1766 - 8, 1773 (from Rome), 1780; exh. RA 1777 (from Rome), 1779, 1780 (from London).

1768 - 79 Rome (1768 - 73), Naples (1773, Jan. 1774), Capua (28 Apr.), Rome (1774), Florence (by Feb. 1775 - Jan. 1777 - ), Rome (1777) [London 1779]

Dean, the landscape painter, was sent to Italy by Henry, 2nd Viscount Palmerston, and his arrival in Rome is recorded in 1768.1 He 'made himself so conspicuous in Italy', said Thomas Jones, 'where no person as I was told that ever went from this country to that, had had the address to excite so much curiosity and attention - his fame flew him where ever he went - From Florence to Rome - From Rome to Naples and so back again - "Ecco viene il grand pittore inglese" was the cry'.2 Father Thorpe described another aspect of Dean's reputation in Italy: 'the fellow is mad in his prices; if not less so in his conduct; knocks off pictures as fast almost as a carpenter does a joint stool; contrives to get his own prices for them, and yet cannot live ... His pictures are rather pleasing than fine, they always present fair weather ... He cannot paint figures; they are always put into the picture by another hand'.3

During the winter of 1768 - 9 Dean was commissioned by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn to paint a landscape (paid for in July 1769, see Wynn). By 23 February 1771 Dean had taken rooms at Rome in the same house as Timothy Collopy on the Strada Babuino; the following year he moved to the Strada Felice and was recorded, aged 26, in lodgings with Solomon Delane and James Nevay.4 In 1771 Dean was copying one of Prince Altieri's Claudes for Walters (see Edward Walter) in England, for which he was paid 120 guineas.5 He had evidently spent a short period in Naples by 1773 as in that year, from Rome, he sent his View of Naples to the SA exhibition in London. He was again in Naples early in 1774, Father Thorpe recording on 15 January 1774 that 'last week [Dean] ran away to Naples to get away from the search of his creditors'.3 Dean then brought to Naples a large landscape which he hoped to sell to Lord Clive for 200 guineas;6 having first refused 100 guineas for it, he sold it within a year for above £;200.7 Sir William Hamilton owned two of his oval landscapes, probably acquired at this time.8 Meanwhile in March 1774 Thorpe had sent to Lord Arundell of Wardour a Landscape with Nymphs dancing.9

Dean may have been the 'Heen' who passed through Capua on 28 April 1774 with Delane and William Parry, and the 'Dam' listed with Christopher Ebdon in Florence in February 1775.(10) He was certainly in Florence by December 1775 when he was accompanying Maria Hadfield to the opera and was presented to the Countess of Albany. On 24 February 1776 Maria Hadfield wrote that Dean had completed a painting for Lord Cowper and was beginning another.(11) In October 1776 he was copying a drawing by Salvator Rosa in the Uffizi,12 and in November, with Ebdon, he met Thomas Jones.(13) By this time young William Hadfield was his pupil.14 On 12 January 1777 Dean was elected to membership of the Academy of Florence, his name in the Schedule of Members being annotated 'Claude l'Irlandais'.15

But his private fortunes continued to be erratic. Thomas Jones described him in 1776 coming to the hotel in Florence to greet the newly arrived British travellers: 'Nobody took the least notice of him, or deigned an Answer - upon which Mr D with tears in his Eyes, left the room, which affected my feelings much notwithstanding the numerous relations I had heard to his prejudice'.2 Dean had neglected to bring his wife and child to Italy with him, but in 1776 Lord Palmerston sent them out unexpectedly to join him in Florence. Edwards relates how the artist happened to be standing at the door of the locanda where he was staying and when he saw a woman approach who was in difficulties, he offered to help. When he discovered that the lady was his wife, he fled to Vallombrosa where 'he laid some days to recover his spirits'.16 It may have been then that he painted his view of Vallombrosa (later engraved by W. Thomas).17 Dean was back in Rome in 1777, when he sent a Neapolitan scene to the RA exhibition.

He returned to England in 1779 and fell out of favour with Lord Palmerston. He began to pass off works by an Italian hand as his own. In 1780 he exhibited in London an illuminated transparency of Vesuvius in eruption, of which Jones wrote: 'This, like the lambent flame of an expiring Taper, preceded the immediate extinction of his character as an Artist - After that, I heard, he commenced itinerant Preacher, And the last account ... was that he had sunk into the Oblivious, but useful Situation of a Mechanik in one of our English Dockyards'.2

1. Hayward List, 13, 22. 2. Jones Memoirs, 12. 3. Thorpe letters MSS (15 Jan. 1774). 4. AVR SA, S.Maria del Popolo; S.Andrea delle Fratte. 5. Thorpe letters MSS (23 Feb., 2, 9,

20 Mar., 18 May, 20 Jul. 1771, 2 Apr. 1774). 6. Ibid. (12 Feb. 1774). 7. Ibid. (9 Apr. 1774; 11 Feb. 1775). 8. Fothergill 1969, 428. 9. Thorpe list MSS. 10. ASN cra 1259. Gazz.

Tosc. 11. Humphry corr.MSS., hu/2/36, hu/2/42. 12. Borroni 1985, 55. 13. Jones Memoirs, 51. 14. Note by Julia King. 15. Wynne 1990, 537. 16. Edwards, 108. 17. A. Crookshank and Knight of Glin, Painters of Ireland, 125.

N. F.