Daniel O’Neill : Romanticism and Friendships

Exhibition will be first retrospective of artist’s works in 70 years

The Office of Public Works (OPW) is delighted to present ‘Daniel O’Neill: Romanticism and Friendships’ at the Farmleigh Gallery, opening on 12 March. The exhibition is curated by art historian Karen Reihill, author of the eponymous monograph on the artist published in 2020 to mark the centenary of his birth. The majority of the paintings on display have been sourced from private collections, many unseen in public in over 50 years. Others are from the collections of IMMA, University of Limerick and the Ulster Museum.

This exhibition will be Daniel O’Neill’s first retrospective since 1952. That year, the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (Ulster Museum) hosted a retrospective for him, which recorded a record attendance. Putting Daniel O’Neill’s work in context, the exhibition will also feature paintings by his friends and fellow artists Gerard Dillon, Colin Middleton, Arthur Armstrong, Nano Reid and George Campbell, amongst others. It offers an opportunity to a new audience and generation of critics, students and enthusiasts to reexamine the life and work of this artist, who was highly regarded by critics in the post-war years and whose works were in popular demand until his untimely death in 1974.

Born in Belfast, O’Neill had little orthodox training except for a few classes at the College of Art, Belfast. He started painting with watercolours at the age of fifteen and spent all his spare time in the Belfast Reference Library, studying the Italian Renaissance painters. Working as an electrical engineer in the Belfast Corporation Transport Department, he worked on the night shift so that he could paint during the day. In 1945, he was taken on by Dublin dealer Victor Waddington, who organised several solo shows, and in 1948, he spent six months in France, where he was given the opportunity to study the painters he admired such as Watteau, Rouault, Vlaminck, Utrillo and the Impressionists. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, his works were selected to participate in over twenty overseas exhibitions of Irish art that toured Britain, Europe and the USA. Many of these exhibitions were sponsored by the Irish Department of External Affairs and they were intended to showcase the very best of Irish art abroad.

After more than a decade in London, he returned to Belfast where his 1970 exhibition surprised critics with its new, bright, strong colours, a departure from the sombre romantic style they had last seen in the 1950s. He held his last solo exhibition in Dublin in 1971 at the Dawson Gallery and his future looked promising. Unfortunately, his health deteriorated and he died tragically in March 1974, aged only 54.

ENDS

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Listing Information

Exhibition title: Daniel O’Neill: Romanticism and Friendship

Location: Farmleigh Gallery, Farmleigh House & Estate, Phoenix Park, Dublin

Dates & Times: 13 March to 6 June 2022

Times Open Tuesday to Sunday

10am to 5pm (Closed for Lunch 1 to 2pm)

Admission: Free

Website: Farmleigh Gallery