seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Engraving


by Leave a comment

Death of Artist Samuel McCloy

Samuel McCloy, Irish artist who trains at Belfast School of Design and later at Somerset House, dies in Balham, South London, on October 4, 1904. He exhibits widely in group shows across the British Isles and is known for his watercolours, genre paintings, still life and landscapes. He is also a commercial designer, illustrator, and an educator who is for a time Master at Waterford School of Art.

Born on March 13, 1831, in Lisburn, County Antrim, McCloy is the youngest of five children, born to Peter McCloy, a painter, and his wife Martha Phelan. He studies at the School of Design in Belfast from 1850 to 1851 while serving an apprenticeship in engraving, with J and T Smyth. He then spende a year at the Central School, Somerset House in London before being appointed Master at the Waterford School of Art around 1853, when he also becomes a visiting instructor to several other institutions. In the spring of 1865 he marries his student, the Waterford artist Ellen Lucy Harris, the fourth daughter of a banker named Richard Harris. The dismembered corpse of McCloy’s mother is recovered from the River Suir in September of the same year. She had been missing since the previous November.

Between 1873 and 1891 McCloy shows nine works at the Royal Society of British Artists. Upon his return to Belfast around 1874, he works freelance designing greetings cards for Marcus Ward & Co., and in creating damask designs for linen manufacturers. He illustrates Lucy Sale-Barker‘s Sunny Childhood, published by Routledge in 1887, and he is for a time employed by The Illustrated London News.

McCloy shows just once at the Royal Academy of Arts with a work entitled The Haunt of Meditation in 1859. He exhibits infrequently at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1862 and 1882, where he displays sixteen works in that time. He displays eleven works in the 1876 Industrial Exhibition at Belfast’s Ulster Hall. In 1880, he shows at Rodman and Company in London where the writer in the Belfast Telegraph indicates that McCloy is becoming a popular artist and is receiving extensive patronage.

Following his relocation to London in 1881, McCloy contributes works to numerous regional exhibitions, including the spring exhibition of the Derby Sketching Club in 1883, Nottingham Castle Museum’s autumn exhibition of 1888, and at Exeter‘s Eland Art Gallery in 1892. He exhibits with the Royal Scottish Academy in 1882 and with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1887. He is also a member of the Belfast Art Society, an antecedent to the Royal Ulster Academy.

After a year-long illness that prevents him from working, McCloy dies in Balham, South London, on October 4, 1904. He is survived by his wife, Ellen, and nine daughters. The Lisburn Museum in his hometown offers a belated retrospective of his work in 1981 to mark the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of his birth. The exhibition is the first known solo display of McCloy’s work and consists of 58 works. The catalogue for this show is written by Eileen Black and funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

McCloy’s work can be seen in many public collections including the Ulster Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, the National Gallery of Ireland, and in the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum.


by Leave a comment

Death of Charles Bianconi, Italo-Irish Entrepreneur

Charles Bianconi, Italo-Irish passenger car entrepreneur, dies on September 22, 1875, at Longfield House, Boherlahan, County Tipperary. Sometimes described as the “man who put Ireland on wheels,” he develops a network of horse-drawn coaches that become Ireland’s “first regular public transport” system.

Bianconi is born Carlo Bianconi in Tregolo, Costa Masnaga, Italy on September 24, 1786. He moves from an area poised to fall to Napoleon and travels to Ireland in 1802, by way of England, just four years after the Irish Rebellion of 1798. At the time, British fear of continental invasion results in an acute sense of insecurity and additional restrictions on the admission of foreigners. He is christened Carlo but anglicises his name to Charles when he arrives in Ireland.

Bianconi works as an engraver and printseller in Dublin, near Essex Street, under his sponsor, Andrea Faroni, when he is sixteen. In 1806 he sets up an engraving and print shop in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, moving to Clonmel in 1815.

Bianconi eventually becomes famous for his innovations in transport and is twice elected mayor of Clonmel.

Bianconi is the founder of public transportation in Ireland, at a time preceding railways. He establishes regular horse-drawn carriage services on various routes from about 1815 onward. These are known as “Bianconi coaches” and the first service, Clonmel to Cahir, takes five to eight hours by boat but only two hours by Bianconi’s carriage. Travel on one of his carriages cost one penny farthing a mile.

Bianconi also establishes a series of inns, the Bianconi Inns, some of which still exist in Piltown, County Kilkenny and Killorglin, County Kerry.

In 1832 Bianconi marries Eliza Hayes, the daughter of a wealthy Dublin stockbroker. They have three children – Charles Thomas Bianconi, Catherine Henrietta Bianconi and Mary Anne Bianconi, who marries Morgan John O’Connell and is the mother of his grandson John O’Connell Bianconi.

Bianconi’s transport services continue into the 1850s and later, by which time there are a number of railway services in the country. The Bianconi coaches continue to be well-patronised, by offering connections from various termini, one of the first and few examples of an integrated transport system in Ireland. By 1865 Bianconi’s annual income was about £35,000.

Charles Bianconi dies on September 22, 1875, at Longfield House, Boherlahan, County Tipperary. Having donated land to the parish of Boherlahan for the construction of a parish church, he wishes to be buried on the Church grounds. He, and his family, are buried in a side chapel, separate from the parish church in Boherlahan, approximately five miles from Cashel, County Tipperary.