Charles Lamb

The son of a painter and decorator, Charles Lamb was born in Portadown, Co. Armagh. Initially apprenticed to his father, he also attended the local technical collage before enrolling at the Belfast School of Art for life drawing classes. In 1917 Lamb was awarded a scholarship to study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where his teachers included Sean Keating. He exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy for the first time in 1922 and in 1938 he was elected a member. The subject matter of Lamb's paintings, like Gathering Seaweed (or Bringing Home the Seaweed), is drawn from Irish life, and he is well known for his landscapes of the west coast and his paintings of Irish "types", like the fishermen of the Aran islanders. His paintings are the result of his love of the rural West of Ireland. In 1921 he visited Carraoe, a remote Irish-speaking part of Connemara, for the first time. Over the next ten years he returned at regular intervals before settling there permanently in 1935.