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Lot Essay
Frank O'Meara was born in Carlow, the son of a doctor. In 1873 or thereabouts, he travelled to Paris to study art, entering the newly established atelier of Carolus-Duran, along with the young John Singer Sargent, and R.A.M. Stevenson, the cousin of Robert Louis. In 1875 he visited Barbizon, moving on in August of the same year to the village of Grez-sur-Loing, a few miles south of Fointainebleau. After finishing his studies he returned to the village, making it his base for the next thirteen years and finding constant inspiration in the river and the neighbouring forest of Fointainbleau.
The rarity of O'Meara's work can be accounted for by the fact that he was a painfully slow worker who only produced one major painting a year, and that he contracted malaria in 1884 while painting in a French marsh. The disease finally killed him in 1888 at the age of thirty five.
(see J. Campbell, Frank O'Meara and his Contemporaries, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art exhibition catalogue, Dublin; The Crawford Gallery, Cork; and The Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1989, pp. 13-31).
We are very grateful to Dr. Julian Campbell for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry, and we would like to take this opportunity to credit his assistance in preparing the catalogue entry for Rêverie (Dreaming) which was sold in these rooms on 20 May 1999 as lot 189 for the world record price of £496,500.
The rarity of O'Meara's work can be accounted for by the fact that he was a painfully slow worker who only produced one major painting a year, and that he contracted malaria in 1884 while painting in a French marsh. The disease finally killed him in 1888 at the age of thirty five.
(see J. Campbell, Frank O'Meara and his Contemporaries, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art exhibition catalogue, Dublin; The Crawford Gallery, Cork; and The Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1989, pp. 13-31).
We are very grateful to Dr. Julian Campbell for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry, and we would like to take this opportunity to credit his assistance in preparing the catalogue entry for Rêverie (Dreaming) which was sold in these rooms on 20 May 1999 as lot 189 for the world record price of £496,500.