George Bernard O'Neill (17 July 1828 – 23 September 1917), was a prolific Irish genre painter, from 1859 a member of the Cranbrook Colony of artists.

Life and work

O'Neill was born in Dublin in Ireland, the ninth of fifteen children of a Dublin Ordnance clerk. He arrived in England in 1837, went to school in Woolwich and was accepted at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

Schools in 1845. He was a successful student, regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1847 onwards, and gained a reputation as a painter of charming narrative scenes. 'The Foundling', exhibited in 1852, demonstrated his awareness of works by

Old Masters In art history, "Old Master" (or "old master")Old Masters De ...

combined with the appealing subject of an orphaned child. In 1855 O'Neill married Emma Stuart Callcott, a cousin of

John Callcott Horsley John Callcott Horsley RA (29 January 1817 – 18 October 1903) was an English academic painter of genre and historical scenes, illustrator, and designer of the first Christmas card. He was a member of the artist's colony in Cranbrook. Chi ...

. Through this marriage he entered Horsley's artistic circle and by 1859 was introduced to the Cranbrook Colony. Next year George and Emma leased a medieval timber-framed, 'Old Wilsley House', about one mile away from the town of Cranbrook and maintained it as a summer home and studio for many years. It became a setting for many of O'Neill's paintings. O' Neill's artistic manner was similar to that of Thomas Webster and Frederick Daniel Hardy. The close relationship between O'Neill and Hardy can be judged from their little painting 'The Surprise' where Hardy painted the interior and O'Neill - the figure (Wolverhampton Art Gallery). Scenes of rural life - virtuous, innocent, sometimes slightly comical, sometimes sentimental, painted on small domestic scale, appealed to middle-class customers. The height of his success was in the 1850s-1870s, when his works were eagerly collected by Midlands industrialists and the entrepreneurs of other industrial regions of the country. This feeling of public success was expressed in O'Neill's painting 'Public Opinion', which had been shown at the Royal Academy in 1863 (at present at the Leeds City Art Gallery). O’Neill also kept a home and studio in London, where he spent the winter months participating in the capital's artistic life. In the 1870s, along with George Henry Boughton, he became friends with

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

and offered him moral support during the years 1877–78, when Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for libel. Although O’Neill's artistic views were in many ways contrary to these of Whistler, they both believed that the artist's aesthetic purpose gave validity to a work of art. Most of O’Neill's paintings associated with the Cranbrook Colony look like sentimental depictions of children and rustic families, but they might have been intended for more serious purpose. It was noticed that

''"children can be used to publicize the iniquities of the social system without seeming to attack the social structure; reform might well be achieved by appeals to the conscience through sentiment rather than by reasoned argument and criticism of an overly political character."''Roberts, Keith. 'The Cranbrook Colony' at Wolverhampton./The Burlington Magazine, Vol.119, No888. 1977

If so, O’Neill's images of children can be seen in the context of Dickens’ novels as a part of the social movements of that time. The following decades saw a significant decline in the quality of his works and in their popularity. He died in London on 23 September 1917, just two months into his 89th year, having not exhibited for the last 24 years of his life.

References

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, George Bernard 1828 births 1917 deaths 19th-century Irish painters 20th-century Irish painters Irish male painters Irish genre painters Painters from Dublin (city) 19th-century Irish male artists 20th-century Irish male artists

Life and work

References

Further reading

External links