Sculptor’s collection unveiled

A MAJOR collection of work by sculptor Seamus Murphy was unveiled yesterday by the country’s newest national cultural institution.

Murphy’s widow, Máiréad, and their children Colm, Bebhinn and Orla donated the massive collection of portrait busts to the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork.

Arts Minister John O’Donoghue, who yesterday addressed the first meeting of the gallery’s new board since its designation as a national cultural institution, praised the Murphy family for their generosity.

While the collection is hugelyimportant to Cork, it is also important in a national sense, the Ministersaid.

“The fact it has now found a home at the Crawford Art Gallery serves to underpin the transition of the Crawford into its new role as a national cultural institution.”

The collection includes 120 works in plaster, mainly portrait busts, of members of the artist’s family and of people prominent in the world ofarts and politics in 20th century Ireland.

When Seamus Murphy died in 1975, it would have been normal for these plaster originals to have been destroyed, because they had already been cast in bronze.

But they survived thanks to his daughter Bebhinn, and her husband Robert Marten, who packed the contents of Murphy’s studio into boxes after his death.

Sculptor Ken Thompson, also played a vital role by storing the collection at his studio, near Midleton, for over three decades.

A major event, Rediscovering Séamus Murphy, is planned to celebrate the centenary of his birth, in Mallow, in 1907.

The gallery also confirmed yesterday that it has acquired five other valuable and significant works of art for its permanent collection.

The 18th century View of Cork by John Butt was acquired last year thanks to the generosity of a private donor, and with the assistance of a government tax incentive.

Bishop Ambrose Weekes has donated a 17th century portrait of a member of the Browne family, of Riverstown House in Glanmire, painted by Klostermann.

An 18th century portrait, once owned by Frank O’Connor, was presented last year by his widow Harriet Sheehy O’Donovan.

It is said to depict Stella, the great love of Jonathan Swift. And the gallery has also acquired a portrait of Swift by Francis Bindon.

It was added to the gallery’s growing collection of portraits of Irish writers by Irish artists. It is intended that this collection, which includes portraits of Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O’Connor, Yeats, Beckett and Joyce, will become an national and international touring exhibition.

The new board, chaired yesterday by John Bowen, includes Anne Harper; Maud Cotter; Neil Prendeville; Michael F Downes; Mary O’Donovan; Cllr Máirín Quill; Barbara Patton; Dr Frances Ruane; Charles Hennessy; Frank Hayes and Vera Kelly.