ADAM'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MAY 2026

48 19 EAMONN O’DOHERTY (B.1939) General Michael Collins (1890-1922) Bronze, 86cm (33¾”) (h) inc. base Signed Provenance: Collection of Reeta and Frank Hughes, Warrenpoint, thence by descent. € 8,000 - 12,000 This accomplished bronze sculpture by Eamonn O’Do- herty (1939-2011) belongs to a mature phase in the artist’s practice, in which historical commemoration and refined figurative modelling are brought into deliberate synthesis. The present work depicts Michael Collins not as the elusive revolutionary of the War of Independence, but in the formal uniform of Commander-in-Chief of the National Army of the Irish Free State, a position he held in the final weeks preceding his death in August 1922. The sculpture forms part of a limited series entitled General Michael Collins (1890–1922). O’Doherty, a highly regarded Irish sculptor, painter and printmaker, has achieved international recognition for ma- jor public commissions across Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Notable among these are the James Connolly Memorial, the Tree of Gold, and the Great Hunger Memoria l. His work is distinguished by a capacity to merge robust, often monumental figuration with layered symbolic and historical narratives, an approach clearly manifests in the present work. Here, Collins is rendered with notable fidelity to historical detail. He wears the Sam Browne belt and the specific uni- form associated with the National Army during his tenure at Cathal Brugha Barracks- formerly Portobello Barracks[1]. His stance, upright with arms folded, projects a studied composure that evokes authority, resolve and a degree of introspection. This posture, at once formal and contempla- tive, encapsulates the dual burdens of military command and political stewardship borne by Collins during the fraught early months of the Irish Free State. Significantly, O’Doherty avoids the more familiar image of Collins as a covert organiser during the War of Independ- ence, when he deliberately avoided uniform in favour of civilian attire to evade British intelligence. Instead, the artist foregrounds Collins’s transformation into a state figure, a commander operating within the structures of an incipient government. In doing so, the sculpture reframes its subject and emphasises not the covert tactician but the architect of emergent statehood. Beyond its role as a likeness, the sculpture operates as a considered statement on Collins’s legacy. It captures a pivotal moment of transition, the passage from revolution- ary insurgent to head of a formalised national army, a shift that both defined his achievements and precipitated the divisions culminating in the Irish Civil War. A further point of interest lies in the striking visual cor- respondence between this sculpture and a well-known period photograph of Michael Collins in National Army uniform[2]. In that image, Collins adopts a similarly com- posed stance, his posture conveying a controlled authority tempered by introspection. It is reasonable to suggest that O’Doherty may have drawn upon such photograph- ic sources in developing the present work. Rather than merely replicating a historical image, however, the artist appears to have distilled its essential qualities, translating the immediacy of photography into a three-dimensional form imbued with monumentality and permanence. This dialogue between photographic record and sculptural interpretation enriches the work, anchoring it in historical authenticity while elevating it into the realm of considered artistic reflection. Emmalie Conroy, April 2026 [1] Independent Newspapers. (1922). [Michael Collins in uniform at Portobello Barracks]. Two weeks after this photo was taken, Collins was killed in an ambush at Béal na Bláth on August 22nd, 1922.