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Aloysius C. O’Kelly (1853-1936)
THE DESERT CHARGE
oil on canvas
18 by 30in. (45.72 by 76.20cm)
Provenance:
Family of the artist
Indicative of a broader plan to destabilise Britain in Ireland, in 1883
Aloysius O’Kelly and his brother James went to Sudan to report on the
British campaign against the Mahdi, James as correspondent for the
Daily News and Aloysius as illustrator for the Pictorial World.With them
were a number of French revolutionaries and socialists who had forged
alliances with Irish militant and cultural nationalists during O’Kelly’s
sojourn in Paris in the 1870s.
British involvement in the region was ostensibly to end the slave trade
but, in reality, to extend Anglo-Egyptian influence further south.
In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah declared himself the
prophesied Mahdi and called for a jihad to purge Islam of the infidel
and rout the foreign forces from Sudan. His fearsome reputation as a
violent anti-colonialist grew over the next three years.
The jihad had strong resonance for Fenian opponents of the British
regime in Ireland. If ‘England is engaged in a great war that will strain
her resources to the utmost’, wrote James O’Kelly to Michael Davitt,
‘seizing some critical moment [if we] attack her with all our power... we
help ourselves by promoting the long wished for “opportunity”.’ There
was much at stake; according to the Victorian domino theory, Irish
demands for Home Rule constituted the beginning of the
disintegration of the empire.
The mantra, that Britain’s pain was Ireland’s gain, was given powerful
visual expression by O’Kelly.This work is part of a unique series of
paintings and illustrations of these events. Most war artists acted, in
effect, as public relations personnel for Britain’s colonial projects
overseas. O’Kelly’s decision to cover the colonial war from behind the
battle lines of Britain’s enemy was thus an act of remarkable audacity.
O’Kelly painted many scenes in the Orientalist manner of his master,
Jean-Léon Gérôme. But desert skirmishes, such as this, full of colour and
movement, gave rise to several virtuoso paintings by O’Kelly that are
unusual in that they demonstrate an early application of Impressionist
technique to an Orientalist subject, a further indication of O’Kelly’s
originality. O’Kelly was at his best when adapting an aesthetic
subversion to a political one.
Professor Niamh O’Sullivan, Dublin, October 2014
€
6,000-
€
8,000 (£4,800-£6,400 approx)