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Joseph Malachy Kavanagh RHA (1856-1918)
Old Dublin, Marrowbone Lane
Oil on canvas, 70 x 92.6cm (27½ x 36½”)
Signed
Provenance: Mrs. M. Hanlon, Dublin; and later in the collection of John P. Reihill,
Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Exhibited: RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin, 1918, Cat. No. 20
Literature: Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, Ethna Waldron,The Capuchin Annual, page
324, full page illustration page 322
Although older than Osborne, Kavanagh’s career seemed to run side by side with
that of Walter Osborne even before they set off together with Nathaniel Hill to
study at Antwerp under Verlat in 1881. He is thought to have come to Brittany
with Osborne in late 1882/early 1883 and painted in Quimperle, Dinan and Pont-
Aven very similar subjects to those of Hill and Osborne.Writing in 1949 Thomas
Mc Greevy,former Director of the National Gallery refers to Kavanagh in an article
entitled “Fifty years of Irish Painting” :- “ Kavanagh had a wider range and more
solid qualities than Osborne. But neither Henry Allan nor Kavanagh is sufficiently
well represented in our public collections for it to be possible to form an adequate
estimate of their achievement”.This is probably as true today as when it was written
in 1949 .
Ethna Waldron wrote of this work in 1968 :- In 1918, the year of his death , Kava-
nagh exhibited
Old Marrowbone Lane
at the Academy, a painting with his charac-
teristic pinkish tinge in the stonework.This work is in a private collection in Dublin
and the owner had for many years regarded it, quite understandably, as a scene in
Belgium. Until its demolition Marrowbone Lane had, in fact, such pitched roofed
houses.”
Marrowbone Lane was a tenement area just off Cork Street in the Liberties and
was the scene of fierce fighting just two years before this picture was painted as the
Jameson Distillery there, now also demolished, was occupied under the command of
Eamonn Ceannt and Cathal Brugha during the Easter Rising in 1916.
€8,000 - 12,000
