The Louis Ducros exhibition in the Millennium Wing is unlikely to prove a major draw for visitors this summer, writes Aidan Dunne

For the summer months this year, the National Gallery of Ireland's temporary exhibition galleries in the Millennium Wing are given over to the work of a relatively little-known Swiss artist. Louis Ducros - A Swiss Painter in Italy, showcases 50 of his views of Italy, Sicily and Malta. Ducros was an innovative watercolourist who built a thriving career and achieved an international reputation with his views of classical Roman landmarks and spectacular natural settings in the late 18th century. His watercolours are made on an unusually large scale, and worked to a level of depth and modelling more commonly found in oil paintings.

Yet for all that it has to be said that he makes an odd choice as the main summer attraction for the National Gallery.

Given their particular qualities, his watercolours are noteworthy within their historical context, but his is not a name to conjure with, and his paintings are solidly crafted rather than being visually exciting, not works likely to inspire excited word of mouth. Director Raymond Keaveney seemed to anticipate a certain level of resistance in his foreword to the catalogue. The new galleries, he writes, can host shows that introduce the public to a wider experience of art.

"At times this will involve focus on the great masters, admired by all, and alternatively it will mean introducing lesser known talents . . ." The problem with the Ducros, though, is not so much the exhibition itself, or the fact that it introduces a lesser known talent, it is more the question of timing and the fact that it monopolises such a prominent venue. It is not exactly a show that is going to be a major draw for the visitors who throng the other sections of the gallery during the summer months. It's interesting to note that Limerick's Hunt Museum, working with a very small temporary exhibition space, has put together a fascinating show of work by the Irish post-Impressionist Roderic O'Conor, featuring 23 paintings from private collections. It's the kind of thing that is well worth doing and might also be really popular. By contrast, the Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery did not particularly stretch itself with its centenary tribute Celebrating Walter Osborne, simply wheeling out 20 Osborne's from its own permanent collection.

What of Ducros, though? Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros was born in Switzerland in 1948. His father was a teacher, and following his death in 1764, Louis took up his post, but he was determined to be a painter and soon moved on to study at a private academy in Geneva, copying the masters and making watercolour studies of the countryside. Aged 28, he bravely set off to Rome, and he remained in Italy until 1807. After that, back in Switzerland, he gradually established himself exhibiting his work and teaching, but he died in 1810, just prior to taking up an appointment as a professor or painting at the Academy in Bern, a post that represented some official acknowledgement of his achievement.

In Rome he found himself participating in a highly competitive industry as one of the many artists trying to make their livelihood by providing topographical studies of Roman monuments and landscapes for wealthy visitors doing the Grand Tour. He was extremely successful, and gained the attention of a number of important patrons from several European countries, including Ireland. An important part of his marketing strategy was to popularise his work through partnerships with engravers.

His highly dramatised representations of architectural monuments are exhaustively detailed and have emphatic physical presence. The term "topographical" implies a high level of veracity, but there is inevitably a great deal of artifice involved in conveying a sense of scale and location in studies of even well-known landmarks, and Ducros was good at it. He inclined more and more to natural scenes and particularly delighted in the depiction of water in varying states of calmness and agitation. The harbour at Valetta in Malta provided him with material for several strikingly ambitious architectonic compositions. Human figures, though, seem to have been a consistent weak point.

While he was innovative in making of watercolour something with the substance of oil painting, and while he had many admirers, including Turner, who acknowledged his influence, his watercolours are so heavily worked that one could argue that they are over-worked. There is a pedantic quality to his relentless accumulation of carefully articulated detail, often at the expense of the effectiveness of the overall composition. Writing in the show's catalogue about watercolour painters in Italy during Ducros's time, Lindsay Stainton brings up the example of the Welsh artist Thomas Jones. It is striking that his Italian watercolour sketches combine a rare precision with a lightness of touch that entirely eluded Ducros.

There are some outstanding pieces in the show. One of the Malta harbour compositions is a terrific piece of pictorial construction. His view of the huge flooded dome of The Temple of Mercury, Baia has a remarkable sense of space and is suffused with watery light. Water again comes to his aid in a depiction of The Interior of the Villa of Maecenas, Tivoli. But overall, Ducros doesn't really justify his long summer sojourn in the Millennium Wing, particularly given that entrance comes with a €10 price tag.

Louis Ducros - A Swiss Painter in Italy is at the National Gallery of Ireland Millennium Wing until Aug 31st. Admission 10 with concessions.