Dean, Hugh Primrose (1746–84), landscape painter, was one of the three sons of Alexander Dean and Grizell Kennedy of Donaghadee, Co. Down, both of Scottish descent. The family moved to Kinsale, Co. Cork. Dean is recorded as living with his brother, David, a carpenter and builder, in Cork city, in 1758, and it is likely that he studied art there. A tradition of skilled draughtsmanship was certainly in the family, and members of later generations became prominent architects. David Dean's great-grandson was Sir Thomas Deane (qv), who, together with his son Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (qv), formed a successful partnership with Benjamin Woodward (qv). The museum building in TCD is one fine example of their work. When Woodward died, Sir Thomas Manly Deane (qv) joined his father and the firm became T. N. Deane & Son. Hugh Dean's other brother, Kennedy Dean (d. 1796), was a carpenter.
He married Eleanor Gamble on 27 December 1761 at Christ Church, Cork, and by 1765 the couple were in London living at Heathcock Court, Strand. He became a pupil of the Welshman Richard Wilson (d. 1782), who had returned from Rome about 1757 and who was a major stylistic influence on his students. Dean's skill in painting landscapes and his pleasing manners gained him the patronage of Lord Palmerston, who enabled him to go to Rome. He spent more than ten years in Italy, from 1768 to 1779, moving between Florence, Rome and Naples. Like many other Irish painters in Italy who had trained under Wilson, he worked in a style derived from Claude and Poussin. Indeed, it seems that when he was elected to the Florentine Accademia del Disegno in 1777, the entry was annotated ‘Claude L'Irlandais’ (Wynne, 537). He copied one of Prince Altieri's Claudes for Edward Waters, for which he received 120 guineas in 1771. At this stage he was in Rome living with Solomon Delane (qv) in the Palazzo Zuccari, on the south side of the Piazza Trinità dei Monti, a well-known residence for Irish and English artists. Dean was recorded in the Stato delle anime for 1772 as being aged twenty-six, and living in the parish of Sant’ Andrea delle Fratte, Rome.
Although he managed to get high prices for his work, he was always short of money. By 1774 he had to run to Naples to escape his creditors. He was in Florence in 1775, attending the opera and meeting with wealthy visitors, although it was clear that he had fallen on hard times. Dean had neglected his wife and son, having left them in England without support. Lord Palmerston, tired of his behaviour, sent them to Italy in 1776 to find him. An amusing episode occurred when Dean, leaning against the doorpost of a tavern in Florence, spotted a lady in some difficulties and went to her aid, only to find she was his wife. He fled to Vallambrosa for a few days to recover. Perhaps it was at this time that he made the drawing Vallombrosa, near Florence, which was later engraved by W. Thomas for the European Magazine (1791). In the end he persuaded his wife to return to England, and placed his son aboard a ship to train as a seaman under Admiral Mann.
Little is known of his paintings in Rome, although over the years he entered some landscapes in the exhibitions in London. Between 1765 and 1780 he showed thirteen works with the Society of Artists, three with the Free Society of Artists and three with the Royal Academy. The three paintings shown in the RA were The Lago Averno, near Naples (1777), An eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples (1779) and The banks of the Tiber (1780). Having lost the support of his patron, he retuned to London in 1779 but found little work. He exhibited a transparency, The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in the gallery in Great Hart Street, Covent Garden, in 1780, along with some works by an Italian artist.
Things did not improve for him, and he abandoned painting and became a Methodist preacher, but this change of career proved unsuccessful. He died in London in 1784. His son Kennedy Dean, of whom little is known, eventually quit sea-faring and went to Cork. He was mentioned in the will of his uncle, David Dean, as working as a drawing-master and painter. He was married to a woman called Charlotte and had a daughter, Harriet, born in Cork in 1788.