Frank Joseph O'Meara

Frank O'Meara, although regarded as one of the most talented Irish painters of the last quarter of the 19th century, has remained something of an enigma. He was born in Carlow, the son of a doctor and lived for a short period in Dublin before going to Paris and entering the atelier of Carolus-Duran in 1872. Like Nathaniel Hone (q.v.) twenty years before him, he soon left Paris for the forest of Fontainebleau and began painting plein air landscapes in the established Barbizon tradition. However it was not Barbizon but another tiny village, Grez-sur-Loing, that attracted O’Meara. There he became the pivotal figure in the youthful and largely Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian artists' colony. He remained there for the next thirteen years, only returning to Ireland in 1888 where he died shortly afterwards from malaria. Consequently he was for many years after his death virtually unknown in Ireland and even today our knowledge of him is limited, not least because of his relatively small oeuvre.