George Victor du Noyer was a competent, if not exceptional, geologist. He had his faults, it must be said. His eccentricity was such that he was described by a colleague as "at times insane", and as having "come up out of the country mad"; moreover, his administrative usefulness to his employer, the Geological Survey of Ireland, was marred by an alleged "want of all powers of generalisation and logical reasoning".
But du Noyer had a saving grace: he was not only an accomplished draughtsman, but an artist in watercolour of quite extraordinary talent.
Du Noyer was born in Dublin in 1817 of Huguenot stock. He began his career as a draughtsman with the Ordnance Survey, where he worked on the so-called "Memoir Project" of the late 1830s. The objective of this ambitious undertaking was to compile for every parish in the country a comprehensive description of its history, its flora and fauna, its archaeology and social structure.
When the scheme was abandoned, du Noyer joined the newly established Geological Survey - an outcome for which that organisation has been grateful ever since.
It was an exciting time for geologists in Ireland, since the Survey was in the process of preparing the first detailed geological maps of the entire country. Du Noyer proved himself to be meticulous and skilled in his contribution to this ambitious undertaking, his brief being to locate and identify the rock exposures within the various areas assigned to him, and then to map every little detail carefully at a scale of 6 inches to the mile. But du Noyer rose to the occasion in a way that few, if any, of his colleagues could attempt. On his journeys around the country his sketch pad, paints and pens were constantly to hand. Over the years he produced a series of technically and artistically brilliant watercolours of a host of geological features of our island, and decorated his field-sheets, on which the maps were to be based, with sketches that gave a pictorial impression of the areas being mapped. His work portrays the intricate geology of the Irish countryside in great detail, and the wide range of seasonal weather patterns in which the subject matter was observed.
George du Noyer stayed with the Geological Survey for the remainder of his life. He died, suddenly and somewhat tragically, of scarlet fever, while carrying out his work in Co Antrim in January 1869, but his art-work has been carefully preserved, and the collection survives as one of the most prized possessions of the GSI at its headquarters at Beggar's Bush, Dublin.