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Important Irish Art
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wednesday 1st April 2015 at 6pm
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George Bernard O’Neill (1828-1917)
Don’t Wake the Dolls
Oil on canvas, 52.5 x 39cm (20.5 x 15.25”)
Signed and dates 1865
O’Neill was born in Dublin but left for England in 1837, and
was accepted at the Royal Academy Schools in 1845. A suc-
cessful 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 Cranbro-
ok Colony, a group of artists who settled in Cranbrook, Kent
from 1854 onwards and were inspired by seventeenth-centu-
ry 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 ex-
pressed 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).
€3,000 - 5,000