Andrew Nicholl

Andrew Nicholl of Belfast came out in 1846 as the first teacher of painting at the Colombo Academy, and in Emerson Tennent, a fellow Belfast man born the same year, found the patron who would shape his Ceylon work. Travelling the island at Tennent’s side, he supplied upwards of eighty engravings for Tennent’s book, and his Ceylon views reached a wider public than those of any other artist of the island. His manner is unmistakable: a tropical palette of greens, blues and reds, and landscapes framed within a minute border of wild flowers, where close botanical detail meets a wide prospect. Queen Victoria acquired two of his watercolours in 1870.