Sir, - I am a post-graduate student writing to request your readers' assistance in tracing the work of the Irish artist Richard Thomas Moynan (1856-1906). This Dublin-born painter was one of the leading artists of his day, gaining many awards both in Ireland and on the Continent, but ill health brought about an early demise and dispersal of his paintings. Therefore, apart from the core collection in the National Gallery of Ireland, the majority of his work remains in the private domain.
Moynan's best-known painting is his study of a group of children at play, entitled Military (National Gallery of Ireland). This almost life size genre piece depicts a crowd of ragged children playing improvised musical instruments, sauntering through the village of Leixlip pretending to be a military band; but their game takes on a new impetus when a trooper with the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards strolls past. The cavalryman spots that the leader of the children's band is sporting a brass helmet with a horsehair plume of the same type worn by his own regiment. Moynan freezes the action as the soldier steps towards the young drum major, leaving the viewer to wonder about the outcome of the encounter. This widely acclaimed painting was exhibited in the 1891 Royal Hibernian Academy and shown the following year in Chicago and San Francisco.
Moynan's short working life yielded over 200 exhibited pictures with such diverse subjects as history paintings, genre pieces, landscapes, battle scenes, portraits, literary subjects, street children and political cartoons A number of his paintings were regarded as controversial and showed surprisingly modernist tendencies.
Such was the case at the 1887 Dublin Sketching Club exhibition when the reviewer was startled to discover, in the midst of a plethora of water-colours and landscapes by other club members, a dramatically graphic portrait of a drowned fisherman by Moynan. The critic's shock at the uncompromising realism of the subject turned to utter amazement when he noticed that the corpse clutched in his hand real seaweed, which cascaded down from the picture frame. This painting, entitled A Tale of the Sea, is one of many works which is known to us only by a literary reference.
Should any of your readers be familiar with this, or with any other unpublished drawing, water-colour or oil painting by Moynan, I would be grateful if they would contact me at the address below. - Yours, etc.,
Maebh O'Regan, History of Art Department, National College of Art and Design,Thomas Street, Dublin 8.