Walter Frederick Osborne, Irish, 1859-1903
Title: Women on a Galway Quayside
Date: 1893
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
19 x 28.2 cm
Credit Line: Purchased, 2018
Object Number: NGI.2018.1
DescriptionOsborne travelled to Galway several times in the 1890s. He had recently returned to live in Ireland, following a lengthy period in England, and was busily employed in Dublin. In his diary for 1892 (held in the CSIA), for example, he recorded two visits to Galway City and a brief excursion to Roundstone that summer. A small book of Connemara sketches, and several paintings that have come to light over recent years provide further evidence of the artist’s familiarity with the area, and Osborne’s fondness for the subject matter it provided. Osborne was drawn in particular to the daily activities of the local community, as he had been in Brittany some years earlier, and more recently in England. His finest and most elaborate Galway subject, Life in Connemara, A Market Day (private collection), a scene in Roundstone, probably dates from 1897-98, but in essence is an elaboration of earlier, more modest studies like The Horse Fair, Galway, The Fowl Market, Galway and Galway Market Scene (both private collection).
Julian Campbell has noted that the majority of Osborne’s Galway paintings record figures at a distance, and in this respect, differ markedly from his equivalent Breton, English and Dublin subjects. ‘They suggest’, Campbell proposes ‘a shyness, a resistance to being drawn, amongst the Galway people, and may confirm Stephen Gwynn’s comment that ‘The Claddagh women hunted him, and he could only sketch them by stealth’. The group of women in this picture, huddled together and apparently deep in conversation, adhere to this pattern.
Julian Campbell has noted that the majority of Osborne’s Galway paintings record figures at a distance, and in this respect, differ markedly from his equivalent Breton, English and Dublin subjects. ‘They suggest’, Campbell proposes ‘a shyness, a resistance to being drawn, amongst the Galway people, and may confirm Stephen Gwynn’s comment that ‘The Claddagh women hunted him, and he could only sketch them by stealth’. The group of women in this picture, huddled together and apparently deep in conversation, adhere to this pattern.