Description
Aloysius O’Kelly
In the work of Aloysius O’Kelly we see several worlds interfuse: imperial London, the post-Famine Ireland of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, North Africa torn by British wars and adventures, the increasing influence of the United States and Irish America, the artistic pre-eminence of Paris and, extending within these, the clandestine and shadowy network of revolutionary Fenianism. Niamh O’Sullivan analyzes O’Kelly as a painter operating in and influenced by these different contexts and forces.
The result is a complete revision of O’Kelly’s status and achievement as a painter and as an artist in whom political radicalism and aesthetic vision were often uneasily but always fascinatingly interlocked. This is a much-needed study.