Jack Butler Yeats RHA | Expressionist painter

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (29 August 1871 - 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist and Olympic medalist. W. B. Yeats was his brother.

Butler's early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906.

His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, predominantly from the west of Ireland - especially of his boyhood home of Sligo.

Yeats's work contains elements of Romanticism.

He later would adopt the style of Expressionism.

Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929) | Watercolor painter

Rose Mary Barton RWS was an Anglo-Irish artist; a watercolourist who painted landscape, street scenes, gardens, child portraiture and illustrations of the townscape of Britain and Ireland.

Barton exhibited with a number of different painting societies, most notably the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI), the Royal Academy (RA), the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS).

Daniel Maclise (1806-1870) | History painter

Daniel Maclise was born to a family of Scottish descent. After a brief period working in a bank, Maclise’s passion for drawing led him to pursue a career in art which he studied at the Cork Society of Arts.

His lifelong interest in antiquities began through his acquaintance with the antiquarian Richard Sainthill and folklorist Thomas Crofton Croker.

Maclise copied from their collections, and they secured commissions for the young artist from their circle of wealthy and influential friends.

Francis O'Toole | Figurative painter

Francis O'Toole is a Dublin based artist, who has studied in Florence, Italy.

At 17 Francis was involved in an industrial accident which very nearly claimed his life. After spending over a year in hospital and rehabilitation, Francis spent a number of years confused about what path to take in life, this lead to him straying into the wrong group of people and encountering a dark world of up and coming criminals.

One day out of concern for her son Francis' mother suggested he paint, at first Francis believe this to be silly, but slowly began to enjoy this activity.

Paul Henry R.H.A. | Post-Impressionist painter

Born in Belfast, Paul Henry (11 April 1877 - 24 August 1958) was for much of the 20th century, one of the country’s most identifiable artists, with prints of his paintings of the west of Ireland popularised by railway companies in the 1920s and Bord Fáilte in the 1940s.

In 1898 he went to Paris studying under Jean-Paul Laurens, with Constance Gore-Booth a fellow student.

Roderic O’Conor | Post-Impressionist painter

From National Gallery of Ireland:

Although he was born in Ireland, and attended art school in Dublin, Roderic O’Conor’s (1860-1940) work only became more widely known in Dublin in the late 1950s.

Much of O’Conor’s career was spent in Belgium and France: after attending the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools, he travelled first to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp, and later attended the atelier of Charles Carolus-Duran in Paris.

Walter Osborne (1859-1903) Genre painter

Walter Frederick Osborne was an Irish🎨 Impressionist / Post-Impressionism landscape / portrait painter, best known for his documentary depictions of late 19th century working class life.

Most of his paintings are figurative and focus on women, children, the elderly, the poor, and the day-to-day life of ordinary people on Dublin streets, as well as series of rural scenes.

He also produced cityscapes, which he painted from both sketches and photographs.

Francis Bacon | Expressionist painter

Born to an British family in Dublin on 28 October 1909, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was the second of five children of Christina Firth, a steel heiress, and Edward Bacon, a race-horse trainer and former army officer. His childhood, spent at Cannycourt, County Kildare, was blighted by asthma from which he suffered throughout his life.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, his father took the family to London and joined the Ministry of War; they divided the post-war years between London and Ireland. Bacon repeatedly ran away from his school in Cheltenham (1924-6).

After his authoritarian father, repelled by his burgeoning homosexuality, threw him out of the family home for wearing his mother’s clothes, Bacon arrived in London in 1926 with little schooling but with a weekly allowance of £3 from his mother.

Bob Quinn, 1948 | Figurative sculptor

Bob Quinn works full time as a sculptor in Blackrock Co Dublin.

He has pursued his love of drawing and sculpture throughout his career and has illustrated several publications and has been a regular contributor of illustrations to Independent Newspapers.

His sculptures appear in private collections and gardens throughout Ireland, Britain and Europe.

Conor Walton, 1970 | Allegorical figurative painter

Conor Walton is a leading Irish artist and a painter of international renown.

He has had eighteen solo exhibitions in Europe and America and participated in museum exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery (London), MEAM (Barcelona), The National Gallery of Ireland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Museo Páblo Serrano (Zaragoza), Palazzo Litta (Milan), Palazzo Cini (Venice), the American University Museum (Washington DC), WMOCA (Wisconsin), Castello di San Leo (Italy) PO.RO.S Museum (Portugal), Pasinger Fabrik (Munich) and Winchester Museum (UK).

Sir Frederic William Burton | Victorian painter

Irish painter🎨 Sir Frederic William Burton RHA (8 April 1816 in Wicklow - 16 March 1900 in London) was the third director of the National Gallery, London.

• Artistic career

Educated in Dublin, he was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy at the age of twenty-one and an academician two years later.

In 1842 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. A visit to Germany and Bavaria in 1842 was the first of a long series of trips to various parts of Europe, which gave him a profound knowledge of the works of the Old Masters.

Sir William Orpen | Portrait painter

Sir William Orpen, in full Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen (1878-1931) was a Irish painter.

He attended the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin (1891-1897), and the Slade School of Art, London (1897-1899). He became a friend of Augustus John and joined the New English Art Club.

The influence of Velázquez, in particular, is apparent in such early genre subjects as The Mirror (1900; London, Tate).

Oscar Wilde / Vladimir Kush | Quotes

• The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

• To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

• A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

• A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

• There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Brian McCarthy, 1960 | Magic Realism painter

Brian McCarthy is a Irish painter, best known for his Boomtown and Masquerade series of paintings.

Brian McCarthy's artistic career began in 1981, when a painting sold at Ireland's Douglas Hyde Gallery's 'Living Art Exhibition'.

Fine art auctioneers, such as Christie's in London and Adam's in Dublin, regularly feature his paintings, which can be found in many corporate and private collections, both in Ireland and internationally.

Elsewhere, his work has been included in numerous group shows at commercial galleries in Ireland and the UK, as well as annual exhibitions at the Irish Royal Hibernian Academy.

Irish Art History and Sitemap

The history of Irish art starts around 3200 BC with Neolithic stone carvings at the Newgrange megalithic tomb, part of the Brú na Bóinne complex which still stands today, County Meath.

In early-Bronze Age Ireland there is evidence of Beaker culture and a widespread metalworking.

Trade-links with Britain and Northern Europe introduced La Tène culture and Celtic art to Ireland by about 300 BC, but while these styles later changed or disappeared under the Roman subjugation, Ireland was left alone to develop Celtic designs: notably Celtic crosses, spiral designs, and the intricate interlaced patterns of Celtic knotwork.

Phoebe Anna Traquair | Arts and Crafts Movement painter

Sir John Lavery R.A. | Plein Air / Portrait painter

Sir John Lavery R.A. (1856-1941)* was a well-known Irish-born British painter*, associated with the Glasgow Boys*, a group of artists who followed the French "En plein air*" movement.

Sir John Lavery R.A. was born in Belfast in 1856 and educated in Glasgow, London and Paris.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Lavery see: Sir John Lavery R.A. | The Glasgow School of Art*.

Stanhope Forbes | Plein Air /Genre painter

Tate, London / Stanhope Alexander Forbes (1857-1947) Painter of realistic genre, frequently in the open air, historical subjects and landscapes. Born 18 November 1857 in Dublin, son of a railway manager and a French mother. Studied at Lambeth School of Art, the R.A. Schools 1874-1878 and for two years in Paris under Bonnat. Influenced by Bastien-Lepage and painted in Brittany with La Thangue 1880. Settled in Cornwall 1884 and became a leading member of the ‘Newlyn School’.

Markey Robinson | Expressionist /Primitive Naif painter

David Marcus Robinson, known as Markey Robinson (February 7, 1918 - January 28, 1999 (aged 80)), was an Irish painter and sculptor with a primitive representational style. His main passion was painting, but he also produced sculptures and designed some stained glass panels.

Robinson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of a house painter. He trained at the Belfast College of Art. He took part in boxing matches, under the name "Boyo Marko", and later worked as a merchant seaman. Robinson's first exhibitions were in Belfast during World War II. He became better known through over 20 exhibitions of his work at the Oriel Gallery in Dublin, where he used the upstairs framing room as his studio.

Sir John Lavery R.A. | The Glasgow School of Art

One of Ireland’s leading society portraits painters of the last century, Belfast-born Sir John Lavery R.A. (1856-1941)* was orphaned as a child and sent to school in Scotland, later attending the Glasgow School of Art. Following a commission to paint Queen Victoria’s visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888, he then moved to London as a highly successful society painter. Following the beginnings of the War of Independence, he and his wife became close friends of the Irish delegates to the Treaty talks in London, entertaining Michael Collins and his co-signatories during 1921.

Jimmy Lawlor, 1967 | Surrealist painter

Jimmy Lawlor was born in Wexford. He now lives in Westport, in the magnificent West of Ireland. Lawlor has been exhibiting for over 20 years.
His work is based not only on the Irish sense of humour, but on the vivid realisation that the old way of life will have vanished by our next generation.
His work takes elements from his surroundings and mixes them with the people of the place, in their environment and doing what they love best. In their own way, they have helped create the atmosphere around them, whether they be farmers, business people, students or otherwise.