John King's portrait of the 40 year-old Irish painter Francis Danby shows the most important artist of the Bristol School sitting in a mountainous landscape, holding a grey sepia drawing of a dramatic rocky gorge in his hand. The painting is inscribed on the reverse: Francis Danby A.R.A. Painted from the life by his friend John King AD. 1828 about the time he was painting his celebrated Opening of the Sixth Seal. The background from his own sketches made in Norway.

By 1828, Danby had left Bristol to seek success in the capital and to escape mounting debts. Both the landscape background and the inscription emphasise where, in the eyes of his British and European contemporaries, Danby's main artistic achievements lay. His religious, apocalyptic landscapes with dramatic natural settings were seen to rival those of his cosmopolitan contemporaries, such as the renowned John Martin. His journey to Norway in 1825 and his subsequent introduction of Norwegian landscapes to the British imagination impressed and satisfied an ongoing taste for the Sublime among his audiences and collectors.

The naturalism of his Leigh Woods and Stapleton views is not referenced in the portrait, which was intended to celebrate his achievement of a more national fame, and may indicate an awareness that they held a particular significance to his Bristol audiences.

[From: 'Absolutely Bizarre! Strange Tales from the Bristol School of Artists (1800-1840)', catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Bordeaux, June 10 to October 17, 2021.]