Joseph Malachy Kavanagh RHA (1856-1918)
Children playing by a Bridge (probably Watermill Bridge, Raheny, Co. Dublin) (1895)
Oil on canvas, 59 x 95cm (23 x 37½")
Signed and dated 1895

Provenance:...

Joseph Malachy Kavanagh RHA (1856-1918)
Children playing by a Bridge (probably Watermill Bridge, Raheny, Co. Dublin) (1895)
Oil on canvas, 59 x 95cm (23 x 37½")
Signed and dated 1895

Provenance: Collection of Thomas Brogan, Portadown; with Cynthia O’Connor Gallery, Dublin, August 1985; Private Collection; De Vere’s, Dublin; Private Collection.

Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, Annual Exhibition 1895, cat. no.57, as ‘A Grey Day, Watermill Bridge, Raheny’; Cynthia O’Connor Gallery, Dublin, 1994; Dublin, Exhibition of 18th-21st Century Irish Paintings; Gorry Gallery, 2024.

Literature: Robert Goff, Irish Paintings- Recent Acquisitions, 1994; Kavanagh, Joseph Malachy in Painting 1600-1900, ed. N. Figgis, Painting 1600 - 1900, RIA/Yale, 2014, p.328, illus; J Campbell, Irish Realist – Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, Irish Arts Review, Spring, 2014, p.110, illustrated p.112.

 

 

More than the majority of his contemporaries – Joseph Malachy Kavanagh was a dedicated painter of the old streets of Dublin and the townlands of North Co. Dublin and Fingal. He painted variously at Raheny, Sutton, Howth, Malahide, Portmarnock and Rush. This painting Children Playing by a Bridge was probably painted at the old bridge over river Santry at Raheny.

Kavanagh’s work is often quite sombre and introspective in mood, but this picture shows him at his most relaxed, with tranquil mood and harmony of colour. It features three children playing at a bend in the river; a small girl in blue dress, pinafore and smart boots who holds a baby in her arms, while a boy crouches down, about to launch a toy yacht on the water. Kavanagh represents the beach with pebbles in the foreground, the tranquil water in which the small bridge and sky are reflected with care. In the background geese grazed on a riverbank, and across the road there is a wall, trees in full leaf, and then roofs of houses. Kavanagh captures well the dreamy stillness of a day in late summer.

Kavanagh was born in Dublin in circa 1856. His family home was in Great Britain Street, (now Parnell Street). He studied variously at the Royal Dublin Society Schools, The Royal Hibernian Academy Schools and the Academie Royale, Antwerp – altogether for eight years. At the RHA Augustus Burke was Professor of Painting and Kavanagh was one of a talented generation of students, including Walter Osborne RHA (1859-1903), Nathaniel Hill RHA (1860-1930), Richard Thomas Moynan RHA (1856-1906), Dermod O’Brien PPRHA (1865-1945), Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) and Henry Allen (1856-1912). He painted careful Realist scenes in Antwerp, Brittany and Normandy, and was also a skilled draughtsman and etcher. Amongst his best-known paintings are his pastoral landscapes around Co. Dublin, and his tranquil scenes of Dollymount and Merrion Strand, with cockle pickers and seaweed gatherers at work.　

Kavanagh led a life of great dedication and hard work. He had a close professional connection with the RHA: studying there, then exhibiting over two hundred pictures there during the years 1875 to 1918, and was later elected an Associate in 1889 and a full member in 1892. He was a teacher in the Life Schools of the Academy, 1892 to 1911 and appointed Keeper in 1910, and Treasurer in 1911. Children Playing by a Bridge was exhibited at the RHA in 1895. Along with Osborne, O’Brien, Moynan and others he was instrumental in introducing a new spirit of Naturalism into Irish Art.

Julian Campbell, April 2026

View more View less