View of a Limekiln

Little is known about the Irish landscape painter H. Hulley. He exhibited landscapes at the Royal Academy in London between 1783 and 1787. A painting of A Limekiln at Hammersmith, exhibited by Hulley at the Royal Academy in 1785, no. 228, may be identifiable with the present picture. Hulley is recorded in Bath in 1787 and afterwards moved to Dublin in 1790, where he lived first in Exchequer Street and later in Abbey Street. Two views by him of Coleraine, found in 1789, were in the collection of Lord Rathcavan, who inherited them from the Richardson family of Somerset, near Coleraine (see Irish Houses and Landscapes, exhibition catalogue, Ulster Museum Belfast and the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, 1963, nos 27 and 28). Strickland recorded two Landscapes with figures, signed and dated 1790, in the collection of Sir Francis Hopkins (sold in Dublin in November 1820); and two signed pictures, Morning and Evening, in the collection of Patrick Curtis, 9 Fitzwilliam Square (sold November 1856) (W.G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, I, Dublin and London, 1913, p.534).
Limekilns, which were used to produce quicklime by the calcination of limestone, came into regular use during the 18th Century. The quicklime that they produced was used on fields, for building purposes and for lime-washing buildings.