George Victor Du Noyer

1817 - 1869, An artist imbued with a keen appreciation of the sciences—particularly geology, botany and zoology, Born into a Huguenot family in Dublin in 1817, while still a young teenager, Du Noyer was apprenticed to the artist George Petrie, who headed the Topographical Department of the Ordnance Survey.

After leaving the Ordnance Survey, Du Noyer worked as an art teacher at the College of St. Columba and was then employed by the newly-formed Geological Survey of Ireland. Over the course of a half century, he travelled the length and breadth of Ireland, sketching and recording as he went.

He started his geological training under the Local Director, Thomas Oldham, and became a competent geologist, but an unusual one, as he not only mapped the counties of Ireland, but recorded the landscape in a series of watercolours, often enhanced with people and animals.

The Geological Survey archive consists  of hundreds of drawings and watercolours of landscapes and coastlines, particularly of Cork, Kerry, Wexford, Waterford, Wicklow, Dublin and Antrim. Vastly prolific, Du Noyer recorded dispassionately, and accurately, throughout his working life, eventually amassing over five thousand images, most of which were done ‘en plein air’ as he travelled.