Lost Dreams

Series of paintings by

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

The following series of paintings consists of portraits of Irish radical/revolutionary leaders covering the last 300 years. This year is the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising leading many to discuss the implications of the 100th anniversary in 2016. It is an interesting coincidence that the year 2016 will also be the 400th anniversary of the death of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. In terms of the struggle against colonialism the year 1616 marked the end of the beginning with the Flight of the Earls while the Easter Rising marked the beginning of the end.

The idea of this series is to explore Irish history in visual way, to re-present well known Irish figures not as strict historical paintings but more of a modern interpretation of their lives and their times. One artist who very successfully painted the history of the people of his country was the left wing Mexican artist Diego Rivera who made many murals and paintings covering social and political issues of his time. The following work is an attempt to put forward and remind Irish people of their radical history in a similar way.

Hugh O Neill (c1540-1616)

Aodh Mór Ó Néill (anglicised as Hugh O'Neill), (c. 1540 - July 20, 1616), was an Irish chieftain of the late 16th century, who became 2nd Earl of Tyrone (known as the Great Earl). O'Neill's career was played out against the background of the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, and he is best known for leading the resistance during the Nine Years War (Ireland), the strongest threat to English authority in Ireland since the Anglo-Norman conquest in 1172.

Eoghan Rua O Neill (c1590-1649)

Eoghan Rua Ó Néill, anglicised as Owen Roe O'Neill (c. 1590–1649) ("Red Owen"), was one of the most celebrated of the O'Neill family of Ireland. As a young man, left Ireland in the Flight of the Earls to escape the English conquest of his native Ulster. After 40 years abroad, and having served with distinction for many years in the Spanish army, most recently in Flanders, he returned to Ireland to aid the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The subsequent war is known as the Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Because of his military experience, O'Neill was recognised on his return to Ireland, at Doe Castle in Donegal (end of July 1642), as the leading representative of the O'Neills and head of the Ulster Irish. Owen Roe professed to be acting in the interest of Charles I; but his real aim was the complete Independence of Ireland as a Roman Catholic country, while the Old English Catholics represented by the council desired to secure religious liberty and an Irish constitution under the crown of England. More conceretely, O'Neill wanted the Plantation of Ulster overturned and the recovery of the O'Neill clan's ancestral lands.

Although Owen Roe O'Neill possessed the qualities of a general, the struggle dragged on inconclusively for three or four years. In 1646 O'Neill, furnished with supplies by the Papal Nuncio, Rinuccini, attacked the Scottish Covenanter army under Major-General Robert Monro, who had landed in Ireland in April 1642. On 5 June 1646 O'Neill utterly routed Monro at the Battle of Benburb, on the Blackwater.

Wolfe Tone (1763-1798)

Theobald Wolfe Tone was a son of Peter Tone, a coachmaker, and Margaret Lamport Tone; he was born on St. Bride's Street, just behind Dublin Castle. Though entered as a student at Trinity College, Dublin, Tone gave little attention to study, his inclination being for a military career; but after eloping with Matilda (or Mathilda) Witherington,  he took his degree in 1786, and read law in London at the Middle Temple and afterwards in Dublin, being called to the Irish bar in 1789. In October 1791 Tone  founded, in conjunction with Thomas Russell (1767-1803), Napper Tandy and others, the Society of the United Irishmen. The original purpose of this society was no more than the formation of a political union between Roman Catholics and Protestants, with a view to obtaining a liberal measure of parliamentary reform. In 1794 the United Irishmen, persuaded that their scheme of universal suffrage and equal electoral districts was not likely to be accepted by any party in the Irish parliament, began to found their hopes on a French invasion.

When the rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1798 Tone urged the Directory to send effective assistance to the Irish rebels, all that could be promised was a number of small raids to descend simultaneously on different points of the Irish coast. Wolfe Tone took part in one of the raids, under Admiral Bompard, with General Hardy in command of a force of about 3000 men, which encountered an English squadron near Lough Swilly on October 12, 1798. Tone, who was on board, refused Bompard's offer of escape in a frigate before the action, and was taken prisoner when the Hoche was forced to surrender. When the prisoners were landed a fortnight later, Sir George Hill recognized Tone in the French adjutant-general's uniform. At his trial by court-martial in Dublin, Tone made a speech avowing his determined hostility to England and his intention "by fair and open war to procure the separation of the Two countries," and pleading in virtue of his status as a French officer to die by the musket instead of the rope. He was, however, sentenced to be hanged on November 12, 1798, but he cut his throat with a penknife to cheat the noose, and died of the wound several days later at the age of 35 in Provost's Prison, Dublin, not far from where he was born.

Robert Emmet (1780-1803)
Emmet was born in Sam's Cross, near Clonakilty in West Cork in 1780. His education at Trinity College, Dublin was cut short when he joined the patriotic society, the United Irishmen. At first, this group campaigned for parliamentary reform and an end to religious discrimination against Catholics (though Emmet and many United Irishmen were Protestants). However, when the United Irishmen were banned in 1791, the organisation changed into an underground military body, preparing for insurrection with the aid of Revolutionary France. When European conflict was renewed in May 1803 Emmet and other revolutionaries returned to Ireland to head a rebellion. The uprising began prematurely on July 23, 1803 in Dublin but did not get much further than an failed attempt to take Dublin Castle which collapsed into general rioting, during which the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland was murdered in his carriage. Emmet fled into hiding but was captured on 25 August, near Harold's Cross. He was tried for treason on 19 September, and on 20 September he was executed by hanging and beheading in Dublin.

John Mitchel (1815-1875)

Mitchel was born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Londonderry, a son of John Mitchel, a radical Presbyterian minister with strong Unitarian sympathies, and his wife Mary Haslet. Mitchel was educated in Newry and Trinity College, Dublin. After a period as a bank clerk he began working as a solicitor in Banbridge in County Down in 1840. In 1845 he abandoned law to join the staff of the nationalist newspaper The Nation.

Mitchel's radicalism was too extreme for the newspaper and led to the prosecution of the paper's editor, Charles Gavan Duffy for seditious libel. In 1848 Mitchel set up his own newspaper, the United Irishman, where he called for rebellion against British rule in Ireland and criticised British mismanagement of the Irish Potato Famine. Mitchel's calls led to a charge of sedition. He was convicted under the emergency powers provisions of the recently enacted Treasury Felony Act and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment in the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land. It was during this period he wrote his famed Jail Journal. Mitchel escaped from the colony in 1853 and established the radical Irish nationalist newspaper The Citizen in New York, as an expression of radical Irish-American anti-British opinion. Mitchel returned to Ireland where in 1875 he was elected in a by-election to be an MP in the British parliament representing the Tipperary constituency. However his election was invalidated on the grounds that he was a convicted felon. He contested the seat again in the resulting by-election, again being elected, this time with an increased vote. However his sudden death avoided a constitutional crisis, with his opponent being returned unopposed in the third by-election.

Thomas Davis (1814-1845)

Thomas Davis was born in the town of Mallow in the county of Cork. He studied in Trinity College, Dublin, and received an Arts degree, precursory to his being called to the Irish Bar in 1838. He established The Nation newspaper with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon. He dedicated his life to Irish nationalism. He himself was a Protestant, but preached peace between Catholics and Protestants. To Davis, it was not blood that made you Irish, but the willingness to be part of the Irish nation. He wrote some stirring nationalistic ballads, originally contributed to The Nation, and afterwards republished as Spirit of the Nation, as well as a memoir of Curran, the Irish lawyer and orator, prefixed to an edition of his speeches; and he had formed many literary plans which were brought to naught by his death, from tuberculosis, in 1845 at the age of 30.

Michael Davitt (1846-1906)

Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo, Ireland, at the height of the Great Famine, the second of five children born to Martin and Sabina Davitt. When he was 6 years old his family was evicted from their home in Straide. In 1865, he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the organization in Ireland of the Fenians; two years later he left off mill work to devote himself full time to the IRB, as organising secretary in Northern England and Scotland. In 1870 he was arrested in London while awaiting a delivery of arms, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to 15 years in Dartmoor Prison. On 16 August 1879, the Land League of Mayo was formally founded in Castlebar, with the active support of Charles Stewart Parnell. On October 21 it was superseded by the national Land League, of which Parnell was made President and Davitt was one of the secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single umbrella and, from then until 1882, the "Land War" in search of the "Three Fs" (i.e. Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) was fought in earnest.

One of the actions taken by the Land League during this period was the campaign of ostracism against the land agent Captain Charles Boycott in the autumn of 1880. This incident led to Boycott abandoning Ireland in December and caused the word boycott to be coined. In 1881 Davitt was again imprisoned for his outspoken speeches, later released and arrested yet again in 1883. Upon his release in 1882, he campaigned for land nationalisation and an alliance between the British working class, Irish labourers and tenant farmers. In 1882 he was elected Member of Parliament for County Meath but was disqualified from taking his seat as he was in prison at the time. He was subsequently elected for West Mayo in 1895.

James Connolly (1868-1916)

James Connolly was a Scottish Irish socialist leader. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to Irish emigrant parents. While active as a socialist in Great Britain Connolly was among the founders of the Socialist Labour Party which split from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903. He was right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913, in response to the Lockout, he founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim was to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. When the Easter Rising occurred on April 24, 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, and as the Dublin brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto Commander in Chief. Following the surrender he was executed by the British for his role, although he was so badly injured in the fighting that he was unable to stand for his execution, and was therefore shot in a chair.

Countess Markiewicz (1868-1927)

Born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth, the elder daughter of baronet and explorer, Sir Henry Gore-Booth, she lived as a child at the Anglo-Irish family's ancestral home, Lissadell House in County Sligo in western Ireland. She joined James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army (ICA), and, though a member of the landed gentry, she devoted herself to the cause of socialism. As a member of the ICA she took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, shooting a British sniper at one point, and was sentenced to death by the British government. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to her gender, and she was released under the amnesty of 1917. In the December 1918 General Election, Markiewicz was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick's as one of 73 Sinn Féin MPs. This made her the first woman elected to the British House of Commons. However, in line with Sinn Féin policy, she refused to take her seat.

Frank Ryan (1902-1944)

Frank Ryan attended University College Dublin where he was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) training corps, but left before graduating in order to join the IRA's East Limerick Brigade in 1922. He fought on the Republican side in the Irish Civil War, and was wounded and interned. In 1933, Ryan, along with George Gilmore and Peadar O'Donnell, proposed the establishment of a new left-republican organisation to be called the Republican Congress. This would form the basis of a mass revolutionary movement appealing to the working class and small farmers. In late 1936 Frank Ryan travelled to Spain with about 80 men he had succeeded in recruiting to fight in the International Brigades on the Republican side. He fought in a number of engagements until he was seriously wounded in March 1937, and returned to Ireland to recover. He took advantage of the opportunity of his return to launch another left-republican newspaper, entitled The Irish Democrat. On his return to Spain, he again served in the war until he was captured by Nationalist forces in March 1938. He was court-martialled and sentenced to death. In July 1940 the Abwehr arranged for his "escape", effectively abducting him and taking him to Berlin, since they considered that a prominent Irish republican might be useful. The short remainder of Frank Ryan's life was spent in Germany, marked by ill-health. In January 1943 he suffered a stroke, and died in June 1944.

Source for text wikipedia.org