Irish-American sculptor Andrew O’Connor’s public artworks were often too audacious for the people who commissioned them, finds Paula Murphy
Sculptor Andrew O’Connor was in the news earlier this year when his portrait of Daniel O’Connell was unveiled at Leinster House. The statue was originally commissioned for the National Bank on College Green in the 1930s. When that bank closed, it moved to the Bank of Ireland, but was not on public display. Admired in O’Connor’s studio in Paris by fellow sculptor Séamus Murphy, the portrait was thought by others to be an ‘atrocity… a caricature of Daniel O’Connell’ by a ‘foreign artist’. There is no doubt that the portrait is far from being a likeness of O’Connell. Instead, the troubled finish in the work suggests the man’s energy. It wasn’t always the case that O’Connor chose to ignore likeness in his portraits. US President Abraham Lincoln is certainly identifiable in O’Connor’s several portraits of him, one of which is a public statue in front of the State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln’s portrait likeness by O’Connor – including busts in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Fig 7) and the Royal Exchange in London – was captured from close study of life casts of his face and from photographs.
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