WHYTE'S in association with CHRISTIE'S - The Ernie O'Malley Collection MONDAY 25 November 2019

18 the King. When the Dublin Brigade occupied the Four Courts in Dublin, he became their director of organisation and was in charge of defending the Four Courts at the start of the Civil War. After the surrender of the Four Courts and his escape, he served as assistant chief of staff under Liam Lynch until he was severely wounded and captured in November 1922. Due to his injuries he was neither tried nor executed. During his eighteen-month incarceration in Free State jails and internment camps, he started to recover and read a great deal. He was elected as a Sinn Féin TD for North Dublin in 1923 and then went on a 41-day hunger strike which he barely survived. He was one of the last Republicans to be released from prison in July 1924 ‘to begin life over again’. To recover his health, Ernie walked around southern Europe, climbing the Pyrenees and visiting old churches and museums throughout France and Italy. He returned to UCD to pursue his medical studies in October 1926, but his heart was not in it. In 1928, he accepted an offer to raise funds in the United States with Frank Aiken to establish Éamon de Valera’s independent newspaper, The Irish Press. However, by mid- 1929 while on the West Coast, though he had already decided to devote his life to the arts, he initially started writing his own memoir of his military experience. He spent the next six years living in artistic and literary communities in California, New Mexico, Old Mexico, and New York City. While living in New York, he met and fell in love with the American artist, sculptor, painter and photographer, Helen Hooker. Though his memoir was not published at the time, some of his poems were. He secured the promise of a small pension from the new Fianna Fáil government, where Frank Aiken was now the Minister of Defence. With the expectation of a pension and a desire to return home, Ernie ended his American journey and invited Helen Hooker to live in Ireland. After her arrival in September 1935, they decided to marry and settle down in Dublin. He secured his pension and returned to his medical studies, which he then dropped in favor of a diploma in European Painting. He became father to his first son, Cathal, took up photography, and published the first half of his memoir as On Another Man’s Wound. The second half of his memoir, The Singing Flame, was not discovered and published until 1978. His first book was a literary and commercial success. It was subsequently published in America and Germany. Despite the international success Ernie and his wife, Helen, decided to move to the West of Ireland. Burrishoole Lodge, Newport. Photograph by Helen Hooker O’Malley; image courtesy of The Gallery of Photography Ireland. Ernie O’Malley near Louisburgh, 1938 by Helen Hooker O’Malley; image courtesy of The Gallery of Photography Ireland.