Joseph Malachy Kavanagh was one of a talented generation of young Irish artists who studied in Dublin, Antwerp or Paris and who introduced the radical Continental influences of Realism and Impressionism to Irish art, writes Julian Campbell
The appearance of two French landscapes signed ‘J Kavanagh’ at auction in Dublin in 2023 aroused great interest. Both showed sunny river scenes – one a man in a punt and the other a laundress. Both pictures were inscribed ‘Paris 1888’ and painted in the contemporary French Naturalistic style. As Irish artist Joseph Malachy Kavanagh had visited France in the 1880s and painted open-air scenes in sunlight, it was possible that these pictures were his. However, they were in fact by artist John F Kavanagh, who was born in Canada in 1853, possibly the son of Irish immigrant parents. There were many similarities in the lives of these two artists, but also differences. Certain mysteries are associated with Joseph Kavanagh: his date of birth; his tendency to view his figures from behind, creating a sense of enigma; and a strong mood of melancholy in later pictures. Moreover, his name is associated with the events of the Easter Rising in 1916, when many of his pictures were destroyed in a fire.
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