Charles Brady (27 July 1926–1 August 1997) was an American painter who was born and trained in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and spent most of his life in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Charles Brady was in the

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World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

; he did mundane jobs after returning from war and took night classes in

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

. In 1948 he entered the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

and took a yearlong course. After art school he continued to paint, beginning to exhibit in the early 1950s and at the same time working to support himself, mostly in menial hotel jobs, but also for a while as guard at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. He had his first solo exhibition in the Urban Gallery in 1955 but felt at this time that his life was becoming too confused; As he wrote later: ″I was really lost. I wasn't capable of living that way - the very late nights, the heavy drinking, the carousing, the women - I couldn't seem to get my life together.″John O'Regan (ed.), ''Works 9 - Charles Brady''. Dublin: Gandon Editions, 1993. To escape, he travelled by ferry to Ireland in 1956 and began painting the Irish countryside. He returned to New York in 1958 but in 1959 he moved back to Ireland and settled there for good, first in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

and then Dún Laoghaire. Poverty forced him to paint on small pieces of cardboard and small pictures became typical; he began to value the intimacy, and affordability, of small paintings. His ambitions were modest: ″I had hoped, from the very beginning, to sell my paintings if possible to ordinary people and my paintings would fit into living rooms or bedrooms.″ In the 1960s he began painting still lives of everyday objects such as envelopes and tickets and this also became typical. These small, modest, compositions allowed him to refine a spare almost mystical style. As one critic wrote: ″...his speciality is the raising of an object - every day or of vague historical interest . .- to the intensity of aesthetic experience by the use of subtly simplified composition and muted colours.″ Charles Brady married Eelagh Noonan in 1960. Brady died of cancer at the age of seventy-one. He is buried in Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Co. Dublin.

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