The Dublin Harp Society is founded on July 13, 1809, by John Bernard Trotter, a former secretary to Charles James Fox and a passionate supporter of Irish music, to revive and preserve the ancient Irish harp tradition, and it flourishes briefly with contributions from prominent patrons and musicians before closing in 1812 due to financial difficulties.
Inspired by the Belfast Irish Harp Society, Trotter aims to create a society that will extend the revival of the Irish harp to the capital and broaden its audience across Ireland. The society’s purpose is to rescue the old Irish harp from oblivion, teach blind and talented harpers, and promote Irish music through public events, publications, and performances.
Trotter gathers an influential list of subscribers, including Thomas Moore, the poet and songwriter, and Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist. He brings to Dublin Patrick Quin (pictured), a blind harper from Portadown, County Armagh, as the society’s instructor. Quin is one of the last of the traditional blind harpers and performs extensively at society events, including Turlough O’Carolan commemorations, delighting patrons and audiences. The Bishop of Kildare, Charles Dalrymple Lindsay, also supports the society by providing a house in Glasnevin for the instruction of harpers.
The society engages in multiple avenues to revive Irish harp music. In addition to the previously mentioned Turlough O’Carolan commemorations, circulars and subscription notices are published to drum up public support and secure funding. The Society hosts concerts and gatherings at prominent Dublin locations, offering elaborate performances for subscribers. Tuition and mentorship to young Irish harpers is provided, particularly to blind musicians, as part of a broader cultural and philanthropic effort. Trotter also personally subsidizes the society, contributing £200 annually, which helps maintain performances and attract participants.
Despite early enthusiasm, the society struggles financially due to Trotter’s generous hospitality and personal funding of its activities. By the close of 1812, the Dublin Harp Society becomes defunct when Trotter goes bankrupt. The society attempts to publish rules and regulations in 1810 and conduct active recruitment of subscribers and pupils, but it cannot be sustained beyond three years.
Although short-lived, the Dublin Harp Society contributes significantly to the preservation and promotion of the Irish harp, inspiring subsequent societies and harp revival initiatives in Ireland. It highlights the importance of cultural patrimony, music education, and public patronage, acting as a bridge between the older harp traditions and the modern revival movements seen in later 19th-century Ireland.
In summary, the Dublin Harp Society represents an early 19th-century endeavor to revive Ireland’s venerable harp tradition through education, sponsorship, and celebration of master harpers, leaving a lasting mark on the cultural memory of Irish music.
Sheridan begins exhibiting in the late 1950s, participating in the annual Living Art exhibitions and the Biennale de Paris in 1960. He wins the Carroll Prize for Painting in 1965 and 1969. Initially focused on abstract landscapes, his work evolves to include conceptual, performance, and installation art, integrating multimedia elements. Notable works include Everybody Should Get Stones (1975) and On Reflection (2001).
Sheridan is also deeply engaged in the international art scene. He represents Ireland at the 1962 UNESCO Convention of Young Painters in Paris and contributes to avant-garde movements in Australia, including serving as the first Professor of Conceptual Arts in Sydney during the 1970s. He directs the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide from 1975 to 1980, introducing experimental and post-object art to Australian audiences.
From 1980 to 2002, Sheridan serves as Director of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin, with a four-year hiatus to direct the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Australia. His leadership shapes art education in Ireland and helps modernize institutional structures, curricula, and multimedia practices.
Sheridan is also a member of Aosdána, an elite Irish association of artists, and a committee member of Rosc, an important art exhibition initiative in Ireland.
Sheridan’s early works consist of abstract and lyrical landscapes, which later expand to include conceptual and performance art, often engaging audience participation and multimedia formats. He is known for his wit, charisma, and generosity as both a teacher and an arts administrator, influencing a generation of artists in Ireland and Australia.
Sheridan’s art is represented in major institutions, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon, with numerous works having been sold at auction, achieving prices up to $7,624 USD for pieces like Window. Retrospectives of his work are held at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 2001, accompanied by publications that compile his artistic philosophy and contributions.
Sheridan is married to Liz Murphy, and they have five children. His commitment to both art and education continues throughout his life until he dies on July 12, 2006, in Perth, Western Australia. Paul Durcan writes a poem in his honour after his death.
In summary, Sheridan’s career spans painting, performance, installation, and education. His innovative approach, international influence, and dedication to teaching and institutional development mark him as a pivotal figure in postwar and contemporary Irish art.
Osborne (née Meikle) is born on February 21, 1926 in Larne, County Antrim, the daughter of William Meikle who is a fitter at Harland & Wolff. She displays artistic talent from a young age, recognized at 20 by painter Paul Nietsche, and earns a scholarship from the Ministry of Education to pursue further studies. She trains at the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts in London and later completes her National Diploma in Art and Design at the Belfast School of Art.
Osborne’s early career includes exhibitions in Belfast, London, and prominent Canadian galleries after she emigrates to Canada with her husband, fellow artist Dennis H. Osborne, in 1953. She exhibits works such as The Harmonica Player, a portrait of poet Barbara Hunter, and other pieces across Canada, gaining recognition for her skill in landscapes, portraits, and abstract forms.
Declining health due to a brain tumour forces Osborne to return to Northern Ireland in 1959. She settles first in Portadown and later in Lisburn, where she continues to paint despite her illness. She participates in exhibitions, including those of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts and local art societies, maintaining her influence on the Northern Irish art scene.
Osborne dies at the age of 39 on July 9, 1965, in Lisburn Hospital due to complications from a brain tumour, which had been a long-standing health struggle. She leaves behind her husband, Dennis, and their daughter, Moya. Posthumously, her work is celebrated in memorial exhibitions, including those organized by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Ulster Society of Women Artists, and several of her paintings, like Roots and Grief, are preserved in the Ulster Museum and Armagh County Museum.
Osborne is remembered as a gifted painter whose contributions to mid-20th-century art in both the United Kingdom and Canada reflect emotional depth, modernist abstraction, and a commitment to capturing natural forms, despite her life and career being cut tragically short.
MacCormack (sometimes spelled McCormack) is born in 1892, the daughter of Constance MacCormack, and niece of Evelyn Gleeson. Following the death of her father in 1902, the family lives with Gleeson at her home, at Runnemede, Sandyford Road, Dublin, with her mother and siblings, Grace (1898–1982) and Edward (1889–1906). With her sister, she works in the Dun Emer Guild from a young age, particularly after the Yeats sisters, Lily and Elizabeth, leave Dun Emer to form Cuala Industries.
MacCormack also does some acting, theatre set design and is an author. She appears in Joseph Plunkett‘s 1912 play The Dance of Osiris at the Hardwicke Theatre, and designs the sets. She often acts under the name Catia or Caitia Nic Cormac. She also designs sets for the Irish National Theatre Society, Theatre Company of Ireland and the Dublin Drama League.[5]
Some of MacCormack’s most notable works are the tapestries for the Honan Chapel, Cork, in 1917, the vestments for St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, San Francisco in 1923, and a carpet presented to Pope Pius XI in 1931. The carpet is commissioned in an effort by Ireland’s ambassador to the Vatican, Charles Bewley, to secure Ireland as the host of the 31st International Eucharistic Congress. It is designed by MacCormack and takes workers in the Guild almost four months to hand weave at a cost of £450. As “The Pope’s Carpet” it is exhibited in Clerys department store on O’Connell Street in Dublin from January 19 to 30, 1931.
MacCormack designs the poster for the 1927 “Grand Pageant of Dublin History.” She also develops a set of designs for judicial robes for W. T. Cosgrave in 1924, drawing on the Brehon style sketches of which are held in University College Dublin Archives. In 1911 and 1920, she exhibits at the Oireachtas Art Exhibitions, and with the Water Colour Society of Ireland throughout the 1920s. She is also an illustrator, beginning with Christmas card designs for Dun Emer in the 1910s. She illustrates John Hackett Pollock’s 1919 The wisdom of the world: A book of wonder-tales, published by Colm Ó Lochlainn‘s Candle Press under Pollock’s pseudonym An Philibín. She edits a volume for Ó Lochlainn in 1920, The Book of St Ultan; a collection of pictures and poems by Irish artists and writers, proceeds of which go to Saint Ultan’s Hospital. As well as editing, she contributes illustrations and two poems to the volume.
After her aunt’s death in 1944, MacCormack continues to run Dun Emer Guild until its store on Harcourt Street closes around 1964.
MacCormack dies on June 26, 1975. A large collection of theatre ephemera collected by MacCormack is sold in 2008. The Kitty MacCormack Archive is held by the Jackie Clarke Archive, and the National Library of Ireland also holds a collection of her theatre ephemera and letters. A dress designed by MacCormack for Clare Kennedy, the wife of Hugh Kennedy, is on display as part of The Way We Wore, an exhibition in National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, Dublin.
Harrison’s brother, Henry, is a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell and a Member of Parliament for Mid Tipperary. She herself becomes the first female city councillor for Dublin Corporation in 1912. She campaigns to have poor relief extended to the able-bodied unemployed and works to promote women’s rights. She is closely involved in Hugh Lane‘s efforts to establish a gallery of modern art in Dublin.
For some 30 years Harrison is part of social reform and women’s rights in Ireland. In 1912 she is the first woman to be elected to the Dublin City Council. Here she works closely with Alderman Alfie Byrne. She is also recognised for her prominent place in the suffrage victory procession and escorting Anna Haslam to vote in the Williams Street Courthouse, Dublin, in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
Following Hugh Lane’s death on the RMS Lusitania in 1915, Harrison claims that they had been engaged to be married. Her 1914 portrait of Lane is one of her best-known works. She never marries.
Harrison dies on July 23, 1941, in Drumcondra, Dublin. She is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, the inscription on her gravestone reads “Artist and Friend of the Poor.”
Murphy is born on June 19, 1914, at Lisheen, Gneeveguilla, County Kerry, part of an area in west Munster known as Sliabh Luachra. Her father Bill plays flute, fife and fiddle, and has a fife and drum band. Both she and her brother Denis Murphy, also a musician, are taught the fiddle by the noted traveling fiddler and fiddle teacher from the same area, Padraig O’Keeffe.
Clifford, her brother, O’Keeffe, and other musicians from the Sliabh Luachra area are regarded as a significant influence on Irish traditional music and have given rise to the term Sliabh Luachra style.
In the late 1930s Murphy emigrates to Scotland and then to London where she works as a hotel maid before marrying John Clifford in 1941. He is an accordion player, also from Kerry, and they had two sons, John and Billy. In the 1940s they play the Irish dance halls in London. In the 1950s they return to Ireland for a time, living in Newcastle West in County Limerick. They perform in the Star of Munster Ceili Band with which they make radio recordings.
Back in London, Clifford enjoys greater popularity with the onset of the 1960s folk boom. In 1968, Claddagh Records records her and brother Denis on an album of Kerry music, The Star Above the Garter.
Rediscovered by the British folk club scene of the 1970s, Topic Records in 1977 issues an earlier recording of Clifford with her brother and Padraig O’Keeffe, Kerry Fiddles (Music from Sliabh Luachra). This is followed by two LPs featuring a range of music from various periods played by her, her husband and her son Billy, a flute player.
The wider appreciation of the music of Sliabh Luachra – particularly its Kerry slides and polkas – come late in life for Clifford. The Cliffords live in a small council flat in Hackney in East London before being rehoused in Thetford, Norfolk in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Clifford’s reputation grows, being invited to perform at folk clubs and festivals. She performs on trips back to Ireland and is introduced to television audiences. She also visits the United States. Many young players who seek her out to learn tunes and styles from her Kerry repertoire find her generous and encouraging.
Clifford’s husband John dies in 1981. She dies on June 18, 1997, one day before her 84th birthday, and is buried in Norfolk.
As part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival, 1,100 volunteers gather on the grounds of Blarney Castle in the early hours of Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and strip naked to have their picture taken at the famous location.
The occasion is the first shoot in Ireland by the American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has already made quite a name for himself shooting large groups of naked people in public spaces in New York City, Montreal, London and Amsterdam.
Like many of Tunick’s projects, the event in Cork comes about by invitation. “It was Mary McCarthy, the art curator at Dublin Docklands, who contacted me first,” says Tunick, via Zoom from his office in New York, of the organiser who is director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. “Mary thought to make it a two-city project, in Cork and Dublin, and brought Cork Midsummer Festival on board. People think I can choose where I want to work, but it’s not as if I can get up and say, ‘hmm, I want to photograph 1,000 people in a volcanic crater in Hawaii.’ In reality, I need a team on the other side, helping me. And it was Mary who established that team in Ireland.”
McCarthy’s crew works with Tunick on selecting locations for his shoots. Blarney Castle appeals to Tunick. “When you think of a castle, you think of swords, you think of dreams, you think of battle and war,” he says. “But you might also think of the rose. I tried to combine a lot of different ideas or fantasies about the castle and connect them to the body. But there were also a lot of grounds around the castle, so I could have different set-ups and positions to shoot in.”
When Cork Midsummer Festival puts out a call for volunteers, it is inundated with applications. Those chosen are of all ages, and from all walks of life. “I think sometimes people associate my live works with young people. But there’s often a lot of people over 50, and into their 80s, at this great unifying event that touches on the idea of group photo gatherings from the 1920s. When you see a big haul of people lined up, undressed of course, it combines group portraiture with abstraction and the naked body.”
At Blarney Castle, beginning around 5:30 a.m., he shoots the crowd in a variety of poses on the castle lawns, facing toward and away from the camera, then lying on their backs as they each held a single rose aloft (pictured above), red for the women and white for the men. He then photographs a small number on their knees in the river that runs through the grounds, and a smaller number again kissing the Blarney Stone. Some participants see the photo shoot as an opportunity to challenge the general disapproval of nakedness that prevails in the Ireland of their youth. Others see it as a way to make peace with their body image.
Later that morning, Tunick photographs about 50 naked volunteers covered in foam at White Street Carpark in Cork city centre. “As a kid, I was always fascinated by the bubble scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the film,” says Tunick. “So, I wanted, in a whimsical and surreal way, to amplify my memories of that. But I also wanted to work with the history of the area, so I infused Murphy’s beer into four bubble machines and created a snow globe effect with the nudes. That was beautiful.”
Looking back on the photographs, one is struck by how most of the bodies are white. If it is true that Cork has become far more ethnically diverse city since that day in 2008, one must also wonder if Tunick’s call for volunteers appealed to a certain demographic. “I always ask the organisers to do community outreach in different areas, so we can get more colour and ethnicities into the work,” he says. “But sometimes it doesn’t really resonate, and sometimes the population is not there, you know. And often, where that population exists, it might not be connected to the body in contemporary art. But I’ve always tried, and now I insist that the organisers make an extra effort.”
Tunick’s shoots at Blarney Castle and White Street attract lavish coverage in the media, a reflection perhaps on how they coincide with a change in the public perception of nudity. The project would almost certainly have caused an uproar even twenty years previously. Participants describe a sense of joy and liberation. “This was definitely pre-Instagram, right? And now when we’re on Instagram, we think the whole world is accepting of nudity in public, but back then, there was not that same outlet for my images. But there was that documentation by the press, and through that, I think people realised that something had happened that went against the grain in a positive way.”
Four days later, Tunick photographs 2,500 naked volunteers on the South Wall in Dublin. Again, the event attracts headlines, but already, it seems, the culture has moved on, and there is not quite that same element of surprise and delight as there had been in Cork.
Tunick has done many projects since. Some of his favourites include those in Kingston upon Hull in 2016 and on the Dead Sea in 2011 and again in 2021. “I like working with props. In Cork, I used roses and beer foam. But now I like working with body paint. In Hull, we covered around 4,000 people in four shades of blue. The blues were those of the water I saw in a number of paintings in the Maritime Museum in the city. I asked Pantone to replicate the colours, and those were the blues we used. Not many people know that.”
“My projects in the Dead Sea were partly about showing how the salt in the water could elevate the body. That created a very interesting, otherworldly effect in the photographs. But they also aimed to raise awareness of how the Dead Sea is disappearing because of irrigation to serve the need for drinking water by adjoining countries such as Israel and Jordan. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Many photographers find their work curtailed by pandemic restrictions of the early 2020s. Tunick too is forced to postpone photographing groups of people on location, but he does find a way to go on creating. “An art collective called Studio 333 in Mexico asked me if I wanted to do group works on video chats, and offered to manage it technically. So we started making group works with people from all walks of life, all around the world. We had someone in Saudi Arabia posing with someone in Israel. We had people in Australia, people in Europe, people all over the world. I think the only place we weren’t able to work with was Antarctica, but who knows? Maybe that’s in the future.” The resulting images are published online, on Tunick and Studio 333’s websites and social media accounts, under the collective title ”Stay Apart Together.”
As for the future, Tunick would love to work in Ireland again, he says. “It’s always been my dream to do a work in Northern Ireland, maybe with 100 or 200 people on the Giant’s Causeway? I can’t have too many, because then you wouldn’t see the rocks. Northern Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway… that project’s been on my mind for a long time, so hopefully some museum or curator will invite me to do it.”
(From: “Cork in 50 Artworks, No 49: Spencer Tunick’s nude installation at Blarney Castle” by Marc O’Sullivan, Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, April 11, 2022 | Pictured: Blarney Castle with the crowd assembled by Spencer Tunick)
Born into relative poverty, Naughton moves to Bolton, Lancashire, England, in 1914 as a child. There he attends Saint Peter and Paul’s School, and works as a weaver, coal-bagger and lorry driver before he starts writing with his wife, Erna.
Naughton’s stage play, Alfie, adapted for the 1966 film starring Michael Caine in the eponymous role, originates in a radio play, Alfie Elkins and His Little Life, first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in 1962, which becomes a production at the Mermaid Theatre in 1963. It transfers to the West End theatre before a very brief run on Broadway. He is a prolific writer of plays, novels, short stories and children’s books. His preferred environment is working class society, which is reflected in much of his written work.
In addition to Alfie, two of Naughton’s other plays have been made into feature films, All in Good Time (1963), filmed as The Family Way (1966), starring John Mills, and Spring and Port Wine (1970), starring James Mason in the role of Rafe Crompton, an adaptation of a play first performed in 1959.
Naughton’s novel Alfie Darling, the sequel to his earlier novel and play, was also filmed, with Alan Price succeeding Michael Caine in the lead role. Both Alfie and Alfie Darling are drawn upon for the 2004 film with Jude Law in the eponymous role.
Naughton’s work also includes the novel One Small Boy (1957), and the collection of short stories The Goalkeeper’s Revenge And Other Stories (1961). His 1977 children’s novel My Pal Spadger is an account of his childhood in 1920s Bolton. His wife dies in 2014 ant the age of 85.
Many of Naughton’s plays are performed at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. An 85-seat adaptable studio theatre within the Octagon is named after him.
During his lifetime, Naughton receives the following awards: Screenwriters Guide Award (1967 and 1968), Italia Prize for Radio Play (1974), Children’s Rights Workshop Other Award (1978), Portico Literary Prize (1987) and The Hon. Fellowship, Bolton Institute of Higher Education (1988).
Naughton dies on January 9, 1992, aged 81, in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man. A “Bill Naughton Short Story Competition,” administered by The Kenny/Naughton Autumn School, is named in his honour.
John Dudley Digges, Irish stage actor, director, and producer as well as a film actor, is born in Ranelagh, Dublin, on June 9, 1879. Although he gains his initial theatre training and acting experience in Ireland, the vast majority of his career is spent in the United States, where over the span of 43 years he works in hundreds of stage productions and performs in over 50 films.
Digges is the child of James Digges and Catherine Forsythe. He becomes acquainted with theatre directors William and Frank Fay and takes an interest in acting. He joins W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, along with others including Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, James H. Cousins, Frederick Ryan and Maire Quinn (who becomes his wife). Their first production, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, with Maud Gonne in the lead role, and Déirdre, is on April 2, 1902. The company, which has no funds to speak of, acquires a couple of bare rooms at 34 Lower Camden Street, which with the help of friends from Irish-revival societies they turn into a small theatre. However, this proves too small for the plays they are planning to stage. They rehearse at the Coffee Palace in Westmoreland Street and also use the Molesworth Hall for productions.
In 1903, the playwrights and most of the actors and staff from these productions go on to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which has its registered offices in Camden Street. The society founds the Abbey Theatre.
Digges goes to the United States with a group of fellow-actors in 1904, and becomes successful as both actor and producer. He is stage manager for a time to both Charles Frohman and George Arliss, and by the 1920s he has become a notable performer on Broadway. One of his best-known roles there is as Ficsur in the original 1921 production of Ferenc Molnár‘s Liliom (later adapted into the musical Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein). In 1924, in Woodstock, New York, he founds the Maverick Theater with the assistance of Hervey White, who had established the Maverick Arts Colony. He is also artistic director of a company that includes Helen Hayes and Edward G. Robinson.
Digges expands his career into films by 1929, and over nearly two decades he performs in more than 50 films, including the original pre-Hays Code adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (1931). He Is cast in that feature as Casper Gutman, the character later portrayed by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 version. In The Invisible Man (1933) he plays the Chief Detective who plots to capture the title character, opposite the unseen Claude Rains. He plays the role of the Heavenly Examiner in both the original Broadway production and the 1930 screen version of Sutton Vane‘s Outward Bound. He also works as a director on Broadway.
Digges marries only once, to Irish actress Maire Quinn. The couple wed on August 27, 1907, in New York City and remain together until Maire’s death in August 1947. On October 24, 1947, just two months after his wife’s death, he dies of a stroke in his Manhattan apartment at 1 West 64th Street. He is survived by three siblings, all living in Ireland: a sister, Mrs. Mai Gannen, and two brothers, James and Ernst. Following a requiem mass at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church on October 28, he is buried next to his wife at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
(Pictured: Digges as Boss Mangan in the 1920 Broadway production Heartbreak House, which he also directs)
O’Connor’s father, Andrew O’Connor (1846–1924), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, is a stonecutter who becones a professional sculptor. As a teenager, he apprentices to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries.
O’Connor is involved in a minor controversy in 1909 when he is commissioned to design a statue for Commodore John Barry, of the American Revolutionary-era navy. His first design is heatedly attacked by Irish American groups. He submits a second version, but it too is ultimately rejected, and the sculptor John J. Boyle received the commission.
seamus dubhghaill 