Peter Harbison delights in rediscovered watercolours by a master of the genre, Jg O’Brien aka Oben
The aficionados of the Irish art world of 1801 were rather taken by surprise, at the opening of an exhibition at Parliament House in Dame St, Dublin (now the Bank of Ireland), to see some very attractive watercolours by an artist named Oben, whose signed works they had never seen before. The puzzle as to his identity was soon solved, however, when the artist, whose real name was JG O’Brien, revealed that he had changed his name to the German word for ‘above’ in the hope of getting higher prices for his work on the London market
Isabella Evangelisti visits the MAC in Belfast, where the work of selected painting graduates from Belfast School of Art is on show
