Self Portrait

Artist Frank Joseph O'Meara (1853 - 1888)

Date1884

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions29 × 22 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased with the support of Mary Stratton Ryan, 2016.

Object number2056

DescriptionFrank O’Meara has a distinctive and original style. He developed a new style of realism which saw close up or detailed images of people and places set in atmospheric landscapes fused with a certain mystic symbolism. The clarity of light in his paintings and a certain fairy tale quality influenced his Nordic fellow artists and he was an important figure for the Glasgow school including Lavery. O’Meara was a slow worker who died aged 35 from malaria. A small but prestigious oeuvre remains. Sir Hugh Lane valued O’Meara’s work highly and he included 7 works by O’Meara in his exhibition of Irish Art at the Guildhall in London in 1904. Three works by the artist were included in the gallery’s original collection of 1908. One was presented by Sir Hugh and two by Mrs.Wengel. The gallery subsequently acquired two further works by O’Meara which were presented by his sister Sara O’Meara. In 1989 the gallery organised the exhibition Frank O’Meara and his Contemporaries. There is no other known extant painted self portrait by Frank O’Meara making this work a significant acquisition for the gallery's permanent collection.

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