A previously undiscovered image of the Titanic has gone on display at a Belfast gallery.

An exhibition of one of Ulster's most famous watercolour painters, JW Carey, has opened at the Emer Gallery on the Antrim Road, showing 41 restored works including one of the doomed liner in Belfast docks.

The paintings were completed between 1890 and 1935 and span much of Carey's life as an artist. One of the most sought after is Holywood Golf Links, painted in early 1912. In the background a four funnelled passenger liner — believed to be the Titanic, which was in the shipyard for the early part of that year — can clearly be seen.

“The presence of the Titanic in one of the paintings is a real glimpse of the past,” said the gallery’s Eimear Flanagan.

“While Carey probably would have known of the construction of the world's biggest liner, he painted it simply in the background of another of his works,

unaware of its impending doom and infamy. Its size and scale are plain for all to see in this painting, completed many miles away in Holywood. Of all the Ulster artists at that time, none depicts our landscapes and seascapes as accurately or as beautifully as JW Carey.”

Carey, affectionately known as Joe, was born 150 years ago this year and became one of Ulster's most celebrated watercolour painters. He was son of the Rev JW Carey, Moravian Minister at Kilwarin, and trained as an illustrator with Marcus Ward & Co in Belfast.

In 1879 he was one of the founder members of the Belfast Amateur Sketchers Club, which in 1890 became the Belfast Arts Society. Carey was the only survivor of the society to become a member of the Ulster Academy of Arts (now the Royal Ulster Academy) founded in 1930.

He died in 1937.

For exhibition details visit www.emergallery.com .