John Mulvany (c. 1839 – 1906) was an Irish born American artist best known as an artist of the

American West The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...

who painted the first large (11ftx21ft) image of

General Custer George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, b ...

’s defeat by the Oglala Sioux Indians at Little Big Horn in 1876. Mulvany's painting ''Custer’s Last Rally'', was finished in 1881. In Ireland, he is known for ''The Battle of Aughrim'', painted in 1885 and exhibited in Dublin in 2010. Mulvany also recorded the American Civil War on canvas as well as maintaining a career as a portrait painter throughout his life.

Early life and training

Mulvany was born in Diralagh,

County Meath County Meath (; gle, Contae na Mí or simply ) is a county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. It is bordered by Dublin to the southeast, Louth to the northeast, Kildare to the south, Offaly to the sou ...

, Ireland c. 1839 to tenant farmers, Francis Lee and Thomas Mulvany. When he immigrated to New York City in 1851 at the age of 12, he was old enough to have witnessed and grasped the horrors of the

Irish Famine The Great Famine ( ga, an Gorta Mór ), also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a h ...

. He worked as a tow boy on the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...

and came to the attention of Professor Juan Wandersford at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in New York City. In 1859 Mulvany enrolled in classes there. before he went to Washington, D.C. to work for

Mathew Brady Mathew B. Brady ( – January 15, 1896) was one of the earliest photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the American Civil War, Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique ...

by 1863. Mulvany never served in the army but may have worked as a sketch artist for a Chicago newspaper. Mulvany's later Civil War paintings were praised for their realism - paintings such as ''Sheridan’s Ride at Winchester'', 1896 ''McPherson and Revenge'', 1889, ''Battle of Shiloh'' and ''The Death of General Mulligan''.

Munich training

After the Civil War, Mulvany worked for Samuel B. Fassett, a leading photographer in Chicago. He submitted paintings to exhibitions in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Mulvany found a patron in St. Louis, Samuel B. Coale, who provided terms for him to study in Europe where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. studying with

Alexander von Wagner Alexander originally Sándor von Wagner (April 16, 1838 – January 19, 1919) was a Hungarian painter. Biography Wagner was born in Pesth. After graduating from the Real-Gymnasium in his hometown at the age of nineteen, he entered the Aca ...

, De Kaiser and

Carl Theodor von Piloty Karl Theodor von Piloty (1 October 1826 – 21 July 1886) was a German painter, noted for his historical subjects, and recognised as the foremost representative of the realistic school in Germany. Life and work Piloty was born in Munich. His fat ...

, then with

Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ran ...

in Paris. He also spent time in Antwerp studying Rembrandts. He was a classmate of

Walter Shirlaw Walter Shirlaw (August 6, 1838 – December 26, 1909) was a Scottish-American artist.''Dictionary of American Biography'' (1936) Charles Scribner's Sons, New York Biography Shirlaw was born in Paisley, Scotland, and moved to the United States ...

and

Frank Duveneck Frank Duveneck (né Decker; October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter. Early life Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernhard Decker. Decker died in a cholera epidemic whe ...

. Mulvany won a medal for his efforts, and returned to Chicago in the fall of 1871 just before the devastating fire.

Career beginnings

Over the next five years Mulvany worked in Eldon, Iowa; St Louis, Missouri; Denver, Colorado; and Louisville, Kentucky, painting portraits and

western genre The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

pictures. In 1876 he exhibited ''Preliminary Trial of a Horsethief'' in New York City. The painting, reportedly sold for $5000, won him national recognition and a reputation as a Western painter. Other western-themed works include ''Lynch Law – Comrade’s Appeal'' 1877, ''Scouts of the Yellowstone'', 1877 and ''Back to the Wigwam'' 1881. The painting of ''Preliminary Trial of a Horsethief'' was painted near Oskaloosa, Iowa. The Magistrate in this trial, seated in the center of the picture, is John F. Cartwright (1827–1893), my Second Great Grandfather. The ''Des Moines Register'' published this picture in their Sunday edition in about 1954. Submitted by Harvey C. Mayhill.

"Custer's Last Rally"

In 1876 when news of General George Custer's fatal defeat by the Sioux Indians at the

Battle of the Little Big Horn The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Nort ...

reached the East, Mulvany immediately recognized the significance of this event and headed west to Montana to capture it on canvas. Over the next four years, he made two trips to the battle site and set up a studio in Cincinnati, Salida, Denver and then in Kansas City., Mulvany's large masterpiece, the 11ftx20ft ''Custer’s Last Rally'', 1881, began its seventeen-year coast-to-coast tour of the country before

H. J. Heinz Henry John Heinz (October 11, 1844 – May 14, 1919) was an American entrepreneur of Palatine descent who, at the age of 25, co-founded a small horseradish concern in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. This business failed, but his second business exp ...

took over ownership in 1898.

"Aughrim"

Around 1882, Mulvany secured a commission from the Irish Club of Chicago to paint the

Battle of Aughrim The Battle of Aughrim ( ga, Cath Eachroma) was the decisive battle of the Williamite War in Ireland. It was fought between the largely Irish Jacobite army loyal to James II and the forces of William III on 12 July 1691 (old style, equivalent ...

– a tragic loss for the Irish in 1691. John began preliminary sketches in Ireland in 1882 and finished the piece in 1885. This painting was presumed lost until it was offered for sale on

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

in 2010 by a dealer who thought it represented an American battle scene, purchased by an Irish art gallery, exhibited in Dublin and subsequently sold.

Politics

Mulvany was a lifelong member of the Irish secret society,

Clan na Gael Clan na Gael ( ga, label=modern Irish orthography, Clann na nGael, ; "family of the Gaels") was an Irish republican organization in the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, successor to the Fenian Brotherhood and a sister org ...

, whose aim was Irish independence. He narrowly escaped imprisonment by the authorities while researching uniforms for his ''Aughrim'' painting at the Tower of London just days before it was bombed in the

Fenian dynamite campaign The Fenian dynamite campaign (or Fenian bombing campaign) was a bombing campaign orchestrated by Irish republicans against the British Empire, between the years 1881 and 1885. The campaign was associated with Fenianism; that is to say the Irish ...

in 1885. His involvement in internecine fighting within the Chicago branch in 1886 cost him the Aughrim commission and after his friend, Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, was murdered in 1889 over financial irregularities with this same branch, Mulvany left Chicago for the west. He married Mrs. Ellen Welch in 1890. and was divorced two years later in CO. He also had a romantic involvement with Lucy Deere, whom he met c. 1880 and contacted before his death in 1906. Mulvany painted in Oregon, San Francisco, Colorado and Kansas City before he finally headed East in 1896. Over his lifetime, he set up studios in 21 different cities, sketching, painting and moving on; often leaving finished works and at least one debt behind.

Brooklyn, New York years

In 1897, at the age of 58, Mulvany finally settled in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York, where he remained the rest of his life. with a studio at 133 Greenpoint Ave. He continued his artistic career painting six known major works, as well as a duplicate of ''Custer’s Last Rally'', seeking exhibition opportunities, painting portraits, and even sketching up until two weeks before his death. Mulvany died by drowning in early May 1906; the press declared it a suicide. He was 66 years old, suffering from throat cancer, a fatal disease at the time, vertigo and possible effects of alcoholism. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. Mulvany's contributions are several. He not only influenced

William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons School of Design. ...

and

Frederic Remington Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United State ...

, he also brought an international perspective to American Western Art. In addition, his life reflects a broader Irish immigrant experience than typically recorded. Recent Irish scholarship has focused on Mulvany's accomplishments. Other noteworthy paintings include ''Love's Mirror'' and ''The Old Professor''.Taft Much of his work is unlocated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mulvany, John 1906 deaths Irish painters Irish war artists People from County Meath Year of birth uncertain 19th-century war artists Artists of the American West 1906 suicides Suicides by drowning in the United States