Patrick Hennessy

Patrick Hennessy was born in Cork but at the age at about five, following his father's death, his family moved to Scotland. He received his artistic training at Dundee School of Art and on graduating in 1938 he won a travel scholarship which enabled him to continue his education during the following year by visiting London, France and Italy. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Hennessy returned to Ireland and settled in Dublin. He began exhibiting portraits, street scenes, interiors and still-lifes at private galleries, with the Dublin Painters' Group and at the Royal Hibernian Academy, where he became a member in 1949. His individual style of painting is marked by a form of academic realism which in some of his early work is tempered by a definite Surrealist mood and in his later development by a very personal, anecdotal photo-realism.