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Important Irish Art
,
wednesday 3rd December 2014 at 6pm
65
George Bernard O’Neill (1828-1917)
The Favourite
Oil on board, 25 x 29.5cm (9¾ x 11½”)
Signed with initials, also inscribed with title, artist’s name & ‘Willisley’ and dated 1868, probably in artists’ hand, verso
O’Neill was born in Dublin but left for England in 1837, and was accepted at the Royal Academy Schools in 1845.
A successful student, he regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1847 onwards, and gained a reputation as a
painter of charming narrative scenes.
He was a member of the Cranbrook Colony, a group of artists who settled in Cranbrook, Kent from 1854 onwards
and were inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painters.They have been referred to as ‘genre’ painters as
they tended to paint scenes of everyday life that they saw around them, typically scenes of domestic life; cooking and
washing, children playing and other family activities.
The popularity of these scenes led to success for the artist in the 1850s-1870s, when his works were eagerly collected
by entrepreneurs and industrialists of the area.The artist expressed his pleasure at this recognition by the public in his
painting
‘Public Opinion
’, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1863 (at present at the Leeds City Art Gallery).
€4,000 - 6,000