Seán O'Sullivan

Seán O’Sullivan RHA (1906-1964) attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art on a scholarship in the early 1920s. He went on to train in lithography at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and studied painting at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. He returned to Ireland in the late 1920s, and in 1931 was elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. O’Sullivan’s reputation rests largely on his portrait drawings of notable figures in Irish society that date from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. Usually executed in pencil or pastel, these portraits provide an accurate, objective likeness of each sitter, and include images of Dr Douglas Hyde, Éamon de Valera and W.B. Yeats. The artist’s ability to capture a good likeness at speed won him great admiration in his lifetime.