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Charles Lamb RHA RUA(1893 - 1964)
Carraroe Landscape
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24”)
Signed
Exhibited: “A Century of Progress” Exhibition, 1933, Chicago World Fair
This is thought to be the same work exhibited under the title “Western Scene” at the
“Charles Lamb Memorial” exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery, 1960, Cat. No. 29, lent
by Miss Eileen Burke.
Charles Lamb was one of that group of Irish artists, during the 1920s and 30s who found their
inspiration in the life and landscape of the West of Ireland. Born in Portadown, he was the
eldest of seven children of John Lamb, a painter and decorator. He was apprenticed to his father
and attended Portadown Technical School where, in 1913, he won a gold medal for being the
best apprentice house painter of the year. As he was anxious to use the human figure in church
decoration, he attended Belfast School of Art in the evenings. In 1917 he won a scholarship
to the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin, where, during his four years of study, he was pro-
foundly affected by the nationalist ferment which dominated Dublin intellectual and artistic
circles and he determined to express them in his art. In sympathy with these ideas he looked to
the West of Ireland to the people and traditions of the Gaeltacht region, visiting Carraroe for
the first time in 1921 and regularly for the next twelve years. In 1922 he exhibited for the first
time and became an associate member of the RHA, and in between visits to the West, made
extensive painting trips to Donegal, Down, Waterford and to Kent, thus establishing the foun-
dations of his landscape style. In Carraroe, however, as James White has written “he found a life
which fitted his ideas of contemplation; which left him time to measure the place of man in the
landscape of the fishing boat on the ocean”.
One of his earliest one-man shows, at Magee’s Gallery, Belfast in 1924, included figure-pieces
which clearly revealed his debt to Orpen and Keating. In 1926 and 1927 he was in Brittany
painting peasant life in a manner derived from his West of Ireland experience. The following
year he was back in the West of Ireland travelling around Aran in a horse-drawn caravan. Until
the mid-1930s he continued to produce important figure-pieces representing typical Irish char-
acters. Thereafter he concentrated on landscape. In 1935, he settled permanently at Carraroe
where he started a summer school. From 1922 onwards Lamb exhibited regularly with the
RHA and was elected a member in 1938. He was also elected a member of the RUA. In the
period 1928-34 he exhibited in Boston, New York, London, Los Angeles and Chicago. In 1938
he exhibited at the RA. In the period 1941-54 he spent much more time painting in the North
- on the Bann and in Rostrevor. He died at Carraroe in 1964. In 1969 a memorial exhibition of
his work was held at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery.
€4,000 - 6,000
