Description
The Dublin Streets ~ Walter Frederick Osborne 1859-1903.
The Dublin Streets ~ Walter Frederick Osborne location is Aston Quay in Dublin. A favoured spot for street hawkers and stall holders for generations. In the painting, a child can be seen charming a gentlemen into buying daffodils. The little flower-girl’s bare feet are an explicit reference to the hardships endured by Dublin’s poor.
Osborne could always be found sketching; filling books with drawings of scenes from Dublin’s streets and alleys. Among his subjects were fish sellers, flower girls and a variety of other city characters. Osborne also made extensive use of photographs, a distinctly modern and popular resource.
The barge and skiff just visible to the right in the painting serve as evidence of the Liffey’s status as a working river. Osborne’s painting is an invaluable physical record of the city. It is also be one of the earliest paintings of the main bridge across the Liffey.
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Walter Frederick Osborne.
Born in Dublin in 1859, the son of animal painter William Osborne. After attending Art schools in 1881, he wins the Taylor scholarship which enables him to study abroad. Arriving in Antwerp in 1881 he registers as a pupil in Verlat’s “Natuur” class. An influential teacher, Verlat was a genre and animal painter and perhaps it was because his father was an animal painter that Osborne felt drawn to Verlat’s class. While abroad Osborne kept in contact with Dublin’s artistic community. He painted Dublin scenes, became a full member of the RHA in 1886 and, in the same year, was one of the founders of the Dublin Art Club. Most of his paintings are figurative and focus on women, children, the elderly, the poor, and the day-to-day life of ordinary people on Dublin streets.
He taught in the Academy Schools, where one of his most important pupils was William J. Leech. Osborne’s return to Dublin was prompted by the death of his sister Violet whose newly-born baby was given into the care of Osborne’s aged parents. From this time he cultivated a portrait practice and became very successful.
Osborne continued to paint garden scenes and interiors with children. By this time the artist’s general manner of painting had begun to change. Influenced by the Impressionists, especially Manet and Degas. In his later work his palette is more adventurous, his brushwork looser, and his approach more painterly. In 1900 he was offered a Knighthood in recognition of his services to art and his distinction as a painter, but he refused. He died of pneumonia in 1903 at the age of forty-three.
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