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Kavanagh’s early life and career

Joseph Malachy Kavanagh was an Irish painter born in Dublin in 1856. It is key to mention that nothing is known of his family history, and he never married, we can only study his artistic life rather than his personal life. Kavanagh began painting at a very young age and began to be rewarded for it at just twelve years old, when one of his pieces was accepted for the prestigious annual show of the Royal Hibernian Academy. At only twelve he also attained a silver medal in the Royal Dublin Society Christmas Competition.

His successful student career continued and at twenty-one years old he was a free student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art he won first prize for drawing from the antique and he also won the Gundy Prize. During his time here he got to work alongside other great Irish artists like Nathaniel Hill, Walter Osborne and Roderic O’Conor (Minch, 2009). Kavanagh began to be recognised for his work quickly at a young age by the time he was twenty-five his composition including Medieval monks won the Albert Scholarship. Shortly after his win he travelled to the Academic Royale in Antwerp with Hill and Osborne. The “Nature” course under Verlat was taking place there and the three artists took the class.

The following year after that they took Verlat’s “Life” class in figure drawing and then the three devoted themselves to landscape painting in Brittany and Normandy. This is where his painting ‘Old convent gate, Dinan’ portrays how Kavanagh was identifying with the more conservative realist style of the Hague school than French impressionism. This masterpiece of naturalism can now be viewed in the National Gallery of Ireland (Ireland, 2022). Kavanagh stayed in France until 1887 and continued working with the RHA while also occasionally contributing to the Royal Academy in London. According to askART Kavanagh was known for his rural and city scene painting, landscape and architectural view etchings and his work is presented in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the Crawford Munical Art Gallery in Cork and the Limerick City Gallery of Art in the Ulster museum. (askART, 2022).

Bibliography

askART, I. (2022). askART. Retrieved from aslART: https://www.askart.com/artist/Joseph_Malachy_Kavanagh/11082908/Joseph_Malachy_Kavanagh.aspx#

Ireland, N. G. (2022). National Gallery of Ireland. Retrieved from National Gallery of Ireland: http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/people/1370/joseph-malachy-kavanagh/objects

Minch, R. (2009, October ). Dictonary of Irish Biography. Retrieved from Dictionary of Irish Biography : https://www.dib.ie/biography/kavanagh-joseph-malachy-a4384