IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

31 IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 25 MAY 2026 AT 6PM In 1899, the almost identical watercolour version was exhibited in New York where it was highly acclaimed. The painting was also reproduced in line form in Henry Blackburn’s Academy Notes (1883), where it was captioned Life in Ireland: Celebrating Mass in a Cabin, as well as being selected by T.P. O’Connor to illustrate his book, Gladstone - Parnell - further evidence of its contemporary impact. 1 In her RHA review of 1889, the novelist, Rosa Mulholland bemoaned the fact that ‘the works of art produced in Ireland of which we can be very proud are few’, but praised its ‘warmth and colour’, and noted that ‘the kneeling figures are faithfully taken from life’. A certain hardness and clean-sweptness, and a severe determination not to idealise or even notice the grace that often lurks about the rugged truth, forbid us to love the picture … but it gives evidence of power, and the artist, Mr. Aloysius O’Kelly, ought yet to do excellent service to his country after time has somewhat mellowed his method and softened his dealings with the positive fact.’ 2 Paradoxically, the negative comments - concerned as they are with realism and ruggedness - were the most stylistically innovative aspect of O’Kelly’s work in the 1880s. The discovery of this watercolour gives us the opportunity to appreciate the quality of his execution. Described by the Freeman’s Journal (2 June 1888) as being amongst ‘the most important of modern artists’, O’Kelly’s Mass in a Connemara Cabin was described as ‘exceptional’. The Irish Daily Express (25 February 1889) considered it ‘admirable’, noting that the figures were ‘finely grouped and carefully drawn’, but doubted that the painting was set in a cabin ‘in the Connemara we read about, for it is cleaner than a Dutch burgomaster’s house and almost as comfortable.’ Indeed, the costumes are not only well-observed but denotative of relative prosperity, and the cottage is clearly capacious enough to hold at least twenty people. But this does not give lie to O’Kelly’s rendition as we can read the cleanliness as a moral allegory for decency, dignity and industriousness. Commonly described as blighted, stunted, and brutal, ‘their huts’, Punch insisted ‘were monuments to national idleness’, while according to Blackwood’s Magazine, squalidness, filth and raggedness were ‘national tastes’. 3 It is typical of O’Kelly to make corrective adjustments to prevailing characterisations that portrayed the Irish so negatively. Dr Niamh O’Sullivan Professor Emerita of Visual Culture (National College of Art and Design Ireland) Founding Curator of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, Quinnipiac University April 2026 Footnotes: 1 Henry Blackburn, Academy Notes, London, Chatto &Windus, 1883; T.P. O’Connor, Gladstone - Parnell and the Great Irish Struggle, Philadelphia, Hubbard,1886. 2 Rosa Mulholland, ‘Irish Painters in this Present Year’, The Irish Monthly, September 1889. 3 Punch, X1V, 1849; Blackwood’s Magazine, L1X, 1846.