Sir Edward Carson, MP

Artist Sir John Lavery (1856 - 1941)

Date1916

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions76.2 x 63.6 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Hutcheson-Poë in remembrance of Sir Hugh Lane, 1917.

Object number252

DescriptionThe Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson (1845-1935) thought that Lavery’s portrait of John Redmond’s was better than his and knowing that Lavery was a Belfast Catholic remarked, ‘It’s easy to see which side you’re on.’ The painting was donated to the Hugh Lane Gallery by Lieutenant-Col. Hutcheson in 1917, according to Lavery’s wishes. Following the premature death of Hugh Lane in 1915 and the ensuring controversy over an un-witnessed codicil to his will, the Unionist leaders Edward Carson and James Craig supported Lady Gregory’s campaign for the return of Lane’s thirty-nine Continental pictures from London to Dublin. Carson believed that Britain’s lack of generosity on the issue could inflame the nationalist cause. Between the controversy over the proposed gallery site, the debate over Home Rule and the Lockout strike, 1913 was a turbulent year. Speaking at a mass open air meeting in Manchester, James Larkin said ‘I have got
a divine mission, I believe, to make men and women discontented... Hell has no terrors for me. I have lived there. Thirty-six years of hunger and poverty have been my portion.... Better to be in hell with Dante and Davitt than be in Heaven with Carson and Murphy... I am out for revolution, or nothing’. In 1913 Unionists held a mass rally in the Theatre Royal, Dublin, in opposition to Home Rule where they were addressed by Edward Carson, MP for Trinity College, the Conservative Party leader Bonar Law and Trinity MP James Campbell who remarked, ‘I would rather suffer under the whips of Larkin than under the scorpions of Joe Devlin. I honestly believe that I would have a greater chance of liberty, of personal judgement and of conscience under Jim Larkin and the Irish Transport Union, than I would under Joe Devlin and the Molly Maguires’.

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