Peter Murray traces the colourful career of Robert Fagan whose art was inspired by antique examples discovered in Rome
Although described by Walter Strickland as an ‘amateur’, and by CR Cockerell as ‘an antiquarian and a great digger’, Robert Fagan, who was born in 1761 and died in Rome aged 55, produced some very accomplished paintings during his lifetime, most of which was spent in Italy. His portraits are stylistically close to those of JeanBaptiste Greuze, but with a harder, more angular, quality. Fagan was born in London, his family having recently emigrated from Cork. His father Michael operated a successful bakery at Covent Garden, which at that time was a notorious area, with residents complaining about ‘the great number of profligate and disorderly people who frequent the square, and particularly that part of it called Irish Row’. Although details of Pagan’s Irish ancestry are scant, members of the family were prominent Jacobites; a Charles Fagan was a captain in Dillon’s Regiment, in the service of the French king.
Mark Ewart visits the studio of Allihies-based artist Rachel Parry who transforms natural matter into mesmerizing art.
Kim Haughton’s portraits, on view now at the National Museum Collins Barracks, reflect on Ireland’s multi-layered society at the end of the first century of this nation state, writes Stephanie McBride
