The Thames at Twickenham

Oil on canvas

British

Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd, London No 10232

Ronald Ossory Dunlop, RA was an acclaimed painter of portraits, landscape and still life subjects with a bold style characterized by the heavily-loaded use of impasto. Born in Dublin on June 28, 1894 of a Scottish-Irish Quaker family. Quaker principles made him a conscientious objector during the First World War, when he worked on the land. After 1918 he determined to work independently as an artist, earning a living by freelance advertsing design and taking classes at the Wimbledon School of Art. By 1926 he was able to totally devote himself entirely to painting. From this point on he obtained considerable success as his paintings were bought by such collectors as Sir Edward Marsh, Mr Hugh Blaker and Lord Sandwich. He held a number of solo exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery, the Brook Street Gallery, the Lefevre Gallery and the Leger gallery. He was elected ARA in 1939 and RA in 1950. The Tate Gallery have a couple of his paintings in their collection: 'Lifeboat, Walberswick, 1937' and 'Rosalind Iden as Ophelia, 1940'. He was a member of the London Group. Ronald Ossory Dunlop was born in Dublin in 1894. His mother, Eleanor Dunlop was a watercolour artist and his father, Daniel Nicol Dunlop, was a great friend of W. B. Yeats, James Stephens and George Russell, or 'Æ'. Together Yeats, 'Æ' and Daniel Nicol Dunlop published The Irish Theosophist from the home of Eleanor's father, the Shakespearean scholar R.H. Fitzpatrick. Thus Ronald Ossory grew up surrounded by the seminal figures of the Irish Literary Renaissance, in an atmosphere that smacked peculiarly of mysticism and spiritualism. The Dunlop family moved to New York in 1899, then London three years later. From here, they made the annual pilgrimage back to Dublin during Horse Show week, with Dunlop's father returning to London clutching two or three more 'Æ' canvasses each time. Dunlop trained in art in London, associating with a group of young artists who all exhibited at the Hurricane Lamp Gallery in Chelsea. In 1928 the group published a journal called Emotionism, with Dunlop supplying a rather vague manifesto ("Art is the expression of the essence of life"), a poem, and an illustration of one of his paintings, 'The Fish Market'. Dunlop soon expanded his exhibiting circle, showing with the NEAC and later with the RA and the RBA. He also maintained his Irish connections, returning periodically to paint in Dublin and submitting a number of works to the RHA in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to painting, he was a prolific author; his books include Modern Still Life Painting in Oil (London 1938), Understanding Pictures (London 1948), Painting for Pleasure (London 1951), Sketching for Pleasure (London 1952), How to Paint for Pleasure (New York 1953), Ancient Arundel (London 1953), Landscape Painting: Ma Yuan to Picasso (London 1954), and finally, an autobiography: Struggling with Paint: Some Reminiscences (London, 1956). Examples of his paintings can be seen in the Crawford Gallery, Cork, and the Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London. Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries: Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia National Portrait Gallery, London, UK Tate Gallery, London, UK Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue, London, UK