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19 Daniel O’Neill (1920 - 1974)
Dimsdale Street
Pen & ink, 9 x 14cm
Provenance:Theartist's family
Born in 1920 at 4 Dimsdale Street, Belfast, ‘Dan’ O’Neill was a tall and good-looking man
who attracted female company. Apart from having taken a few classes at his friend Sidney
Smith’s studio and a short spell at the Belfast College of Art, he was a self-taught artist.
Women feature strongly in his oeuvre, highlighting female friendships and his marriage to
Eileen Lyle, and his relationships with Sheilagh Deacon in the 1950s, Maureen O’Neill in the
1960s and Margaret Allen in the final years of his life. O’Neill met Dillon between 1939–40
and introduced him to the work of Rouault and Picasso. Dillon formed a strong bond of
friendship with O’Neill, holding a joint show with him at the Contemporary Art Galleries
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in Dublin in 1943.
Dillon participated in the first Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) exhibition in Dublin,
16 September 1943, and became a committee member from 1950, exhibiting nearly every
year until his death in 1971. Founded by Mainie Jellett and others,
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the IELA provided an
alternative exhibition venue in the 1940s for those outside the academic mantle. O’Neill
exhibited from 1944 but ceased activity after Waddington closed his gallery in 1956.
Campbell exhibited from 1947 and stopped contributing the year after he became a full
Royal Hibernian Academy member (RHA) (1964).
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Managed by Jack Longford and his partner, Deirdre McDonagh. It was the first gallery to promote modernist
painting in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s.
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Norah McGuinness, Louis Le Brocquy, Nano Reid, Father Jack Hanlon, Ralph Cusack, Laurence Campbell,
Evie Hone, Margaret Clark and Le Brocquy’s mother, Sybil, who was a writer.
fig.21: George Campbell, Louis Goulding,
Lady Jersey and Daniel O’Neill in Waddington
Galleries, 1948.
fig.22: Postcard from Daniel O’Neill to his sister,
Brigid, sent from Rathmullen, Donegal
fig.23: Daniel O’Neill and Gerard Dillon at
the Contemporary Galleries, 1943