Daniel O'Connell

Artist Andrew O'Connor (1874 - 1941)

Date1932

MediumBronze

DimensionsConfirmed: 121 × 33 × 39 cm, 73 kg

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Andrew O'Connor (the Artist), 1939.

Object number864

DescriptionO'Connell was the founder of the National Bank of Ireland and the statue was commissioned from O'Connor by the bank. It was completed in 1932 at O'Connor's studio in Leixlip Castle, near Dublin. Oliver St John Gogarty described the statue as 'the best statue of an orator drawing fire from the central flame of the land that bore him'.(1) A further contemporary description reads: 'Mr. O'Connor depicts the Liberator addressing one of those huge throngs that his public appearances drew. The spirit of crusade is stamped on the features. There is suffering. One inspecting the statue would have some difficulty reconciling it with the portraits and other statuary of the man who only failed in his campaign to bring about the repeal of the Act of Union between Ireland and England, but admirers of the subject find in the bronze the O'Connell they have visualised.'(2)

There is a plaster maquette for this bronze statue in the National Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin.

(1) Oliver St John Gogarty, 'As I was going down Sackville Street, Penguin, 1954, p. 44.
(2) Anon, 'O'Connor models O'Connell', Art Digest, Vol. 6, 1st August 1932, p. 4.

(Homan Potterton, 'Andrew O'Connor - A complementary catalogue to the exhibition marking the centenary of the sculptor's birth', Trinity College, Dublin, September 1974, p. 55.)

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