Life
1837-1864; b. Dublin, ed. Prior Park, Bath; studied under Henry O’Neill,
RA, exhibited RA 1858-63, and illustrated leading periodicals including
Good Words, London Society, Once and Week, and Punch;
drew for Once a Week, Punch and Cornhill Magazine. His
best known painting, ‘The Sick Call,’ exhibited at RA in 1863;
‘The Sick Call’ is held in the National Gallery of Ireland,
showing a clergyman being taken across water in Holland to a dying man’s
home. DIB DNB
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Notes
Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Biretta” makes reference to
Matthew Lawless: ‘But in the end it’s as likely to be the one
/ In Matthew Lawless’s painting, / The Sick Call, / Where
the scene is out on a river and it’s all / Solid, pathetic and Irish
Victorian. // In which case, however, his reverence wears a hat […]
Sad for his worthy life and fit for it.’ (Seeing Things, 1991,
p.26.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)