Munster in 30 Artworks, No 18: Samuel Forde, Fall of the Rebel Angels

After disappearing for many years, the canvas was rediscovered in 1997, and is one of the outstanding examples of the work of a Cork artist who died at the age of 23 

A detail from Samuel Forde's Fall of the Rebel Angels. Picture: Courtesy of Crawford Art Gallery

It seems only appropriate that Samuel Forde’s great painting Fall of the Rebel Angels remains unfinished. After all, the artist known in his native Cork as ‘the young Raphael’ had his life cut short by tuberculosis, dying aged 23 in 1828, and it would have been disrespectful for anybody else to complete his masterpiece.

Fall of the Rebel Angels has been in the collection of the Crawford Art Gallery for over a century, but little was known about its creator until the curators Michael Waldron and Shane Lordan began researching his career in earnest around 2012.