George Campbell

George Campbell, son of distinguished artist Gretta Bowen, was born in County Wicklow and received his schooling in Dublin. Campbell started painting in Belfast in 1941, partly in reaction to the wartime bombing of the city. He first exhibited in 1944 at Belfast's Mol Gallery, along side his friend Gerard Dillon. He had his first show at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1948 with Dillon and Daniel O'Neill and continued to show at the RHA over the next 30 years. Campbell's artistic range included landscapes, still-lifes, figure painting and historical works in a variety of different media, including stained glass. He won the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal for both best history painting at the Oireachtas and best landscape. In 1951, Campbell visited Spain, a country that captivated him so much that he returned there to paint every year after that. This Spanish influence appears in his work in the form of bullfighters, gypsies, street scenes and musicians. He exhibited several times in Madrid and was honoured as a Knight Commander of Spain in 1977. During his lifetime, Campbell's works were exhibited at the Waddington Galleries, Ritchie Hendriks Gallery and the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Dublin, as well as at the IELA, the Oireachtas, the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Campbell was appointed a member of the RHA in 1964 and the WCSI in 1954. Both the BBC and RTE screened profiles of Campbell in the 1970s. He died in Dublin in 1979.