Frank McKelvey studied at the Belfast School of Art in his hometown, winning the prize for figure drawing in 1912. He exhibited at the RHA for the first time in 1918 and continued to do so annually for the following fifty years, being elected a full member of the academy in 1930.
Between 1923 and 1935 McKelvey exhibited regularly at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Art and his first solo show was held at Locksley Hall, Belfast, in 1934 and again in 1936. His first solo show in Dublin was held at
the Victor Waddington Galleries in 1937. During the 1920s McKelvey received many portrait commissions and his work was included in exhibitions of Irish portraits at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1927 and 1931. He was also included in a major exhibition of Ulster artists at the same gallery in Festival Exhibition 1951 and another at Ulster House in London in 1947.
McKelvey’s work can be found in the collections of Queen’s University Belfast, the Royal Ulster Academy, the Masonic Hall in Dublin, Crawford Gallery in Cork, and the Royal Palace of Soestdijk in the Netherlands.
Frank McKelvey's work was included in Adam's loan exhibitions:
'Ulster Artists' (2010). Please click here to view the catalogue.
'A Celebration of Irish Art and Modernism' (2011). Please click here to view the catalogue.
'Ireland: Her People and Landscape' (2012). Please click here to view the catalogue.
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