Dermod O'Brien, Irish, 1865-1945
Title: Gerald (Jeremiah) O’Donovan (1871-1942), Novelist, Political Essayist and Irish Revivalist
Date: c.1903
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
70 x 60 cm
Credit Line: Purchased, 2017
Object Number: NGI.2017.46
DescriptionBorn in Co. Down, and educated in Cork, Galway and Sligo, O’Donovan was ordained a Catholic priest in 1895. He served as curate at Loughrea, Co. Galway, and was instrumental in the building of St Brendan’s Cathedral there. Seeking to embellish that building with Irish art, he acquired with the financial assistance of Edward Martyn, works by such artists as Sarah Purser, John Hughes and the Yeats sisters, Lolly and Lily. He was a vigorous Irish revivalist, championing the Gaelic League, and supported the Co-operative Movement (dedicated to the establishment of co-operative creameries and other local enterprises). Finding himself at odds with the church authorities, he left the priesthood in 1904, and assumed the name Gerald. He moved to London, where he worked in publishing, and in 1910 married Beryl Verschoyle. He worked for the ministry of munitions and the Foreign Office during the First World War. He published several controversial and highly significant novels, including the partly autobiographical Father Ralph (1913), which focussed on a young liberal priest who become disillusioned with the church and leaves his ministry. He had a long-standing relationship with the novelist Rosa Macaulay, but from the early 1920s lived a life of ‘indolence and desuetude’. He died in Albury, Surrey.
ProvenanceBy descent, through the family of previous owner.