Life
1865-1945; grandson of William Smith O’Brien, b. Mount Trenchard, Foynes,
Co. Limerick; ed. Harrow, TCD, and Cambridge; studied painting at Antwerp,
Paris, and London; exhibited RHA 1901-04; MRHA 1907; president RHA 1910-45;
President United Arts Club; regarded as official portrait painter of Ireland,
portraits incl. George Bermingham and Conal O’Riordan; wintered in S.
France; sold family home of Cahirmoyle and settled in Dublin; d. Fitzwilliam
Sq., 3 Oct. 1945. DIB.
Notes
Patricia Boylan, All Cultivated People, a History of the United Arts
Club (1988), apprehensive in the period of the Land Acts about the
future of ‘our class’; wrote to wife, ‘I am getting uneasy about the political
situation in Ireland ... whichever side comes in, it will likely be only
by a small majority governed by the Irish vote and I would not put it
past the Unionists to give Home Rule rather than lose office ... would
almost certainly mean compulsory purchase at a low figure and 15 years
purchase instead of 18 would mean giving up living at Cahirmoyle ... If
there is Home Rule it is all the more essential that a leaven of our class
should be left in the country’ (?in Some I Knew Well) [36]; offered
honorary membership and a dinner at Arts Club, while living at Yeovil,
Zion Road, Rathgar, in ?1947 [224]; further to Cahirmoyle, see library
photograph in plates, ibid; and see also RX Lennox Robinson. NOTE also
many other references, ibid.
Notes
The seat on which Kavanagh writes his ‘Lines Written on a Seat on the
Grand Canal, Dublin’, was ‘erected to the Memory of Mrs Dermot O’Brien.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)