Irish artists we print

Buy Irish Art prints work by the twenty-nine artists listed below. This page is the plain reference: who each one was, when they lived, what they are actually known for, and which public collections hold their work. No selling copy — the links go to the prints if you want them.

Most of these artists are dead more than seventy years, which is why their work can be printed at all: it is in the public domain in Ireland and the European Union. The one living artist here is Barra Ó Maoláin, whose originals are his own.

The artists

Artist Dates Known for Where their work hangs Prints
James Barry 1741–1806 Cork-born history painter who made his name in London, was elected a Royal Academician and then became the only member ever expelled from the Academy. His Temptation of Adam was painted in his twenties. National Gallery of Ireland; Royal Society of Arts, London 1 print
Rose Barton 1856–1929 Watercolourist of Dublin and London street life — rain, gaslight, crowds seen from an upper window. One of the first women elected to the Royal Watercolour Society. National Gallery of Ireland; Ulster Museum 5 prints
Samuel Frederick Brocas c.1792–1847 Draughtsman of Georgian Dublin. His views of the city's streets and public buildings are among the most reliable records of how Dublin actually looked before the Victorian rebuilding. National Gallery of Ireland; National Library of Ireland 8 prints
Frederic William Burton 1816–1900 Watercolourist, born in County Clare, whose right arm was disabled by a childhood injury. Painted The Meeting on the Turret Stairs, voted Ireland's favourite painting in 2012, then became Director of the National Gallery in London in 1874 and stopped painting entirely. National Gallery of Ireland 10 prints
Mildred Anne Butler 1858–1941 Painted almost her whole life from Kilmurry, her home in County Kilkenny — rooks, gardens, farmyards, weather. A founding figure among Irish women artists of her generation. National Gallery of Ireland 5 prints
Harry Clarke 1889–1931 The outstanding figure of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement. Built colour by acid-etching flashed glass and plating two sheets as one, and illustrated Andersen, Poe, Perrault and Goethe for Harrap. Made more than 130 windows before dying of tuberculosis at forty-one. National Gallery of Ireland; Honan Chapel, Cork; Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach 32 prints
James Humbert Craig 1877–1944 Belfast-born landscape painter who returned year after year to the glens of Antrim and the Connemara coast for their changing Atlantic light. National Gallery of Ireland; Ulster Museum 2 prints
Francis Danby 1793–1861 Born in County Wexford, central to the Bristol School, and ranked in his own day beside John Martin and Turner. His apocalyptic Opening of the Sixth Seal took a 200-guinea prize at the British Institution in 1828. National Gallery of Ireland; Tate 2 prints
William Davis 1812–1873 Dublin-born landscape painter who settled in Liverpool and worked in the Pre-Raphaelite orbit there, painting river and field subjects with unusual patience. National Gallery of Ireland; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 1 print
Edwin Hayes 1819–1904 Marine painter. Born in Bristol, brought to Dublin as a child, trained at the Royal Dublin Society schools, and worked as a ship's cook on an Atlantic crossing to learn the sea properly. National Gallery of Ireland 2 prints
Michael Healy 1873–1941 Stained-glass artist at An Túr Gloine from its founding in 1903 until his death. Away from the windows he filled sketchbooks with rapid pastel and pencil studies of ordinary Dubliners at work. National Gallery of Ireland 1 print
Thomas Hickey 1741–1824 Dublin-born portraitist who worked in Calcutta and travelled to China with Lord Macartney's embassy — an Irish painter whose subjects were largely not Irish. National Gallery of Ireland 3 prints
Evie Hone 1894–1955 Went to Paris with Mainie Jellett in 1921 to study under André Lhote and then Albert Gleizes, and with her showed the first abstract paintings seen in Ireland. Turned later almost entirely to stained glass, including the east window of Eton College Chapel. National Gallery of Ireland; Eton College Chapel 2 prints
Mainie Jellett 1897–1944 Argued Ireland into modern art. Trained under Orpen, then Sickert, then Lhote and Gleizes in Paris; exhibited the first abstract paintings shown in Ireland in 1923 to open ridicule, and founded the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, a year before she died at forty-six. National Gallery of Ireland; Hugh Lane Gallery; Crawford Art Gallery 25 prints
John Lavery 1856–1941 Born in Belfast, trained in Glasgow and Paris, and became the most sought-after portrait painter of his generation. Painted the Anglo-Irish Treaty debate from inside the House of Lords; his wife Hazel modelled the figure of Éire on Irish banknotes for half a century. National Gallery of Ireland; Ulster Museum; Tate; Glasgow Museums 76 prints
Clare Marsh 1875–1923 Dublin painter who shared a studio with John Butler Yeats and kept his practice going while he was in New York. Died at forty-seven with her reputation barely made. National Gallery of Ireland 4 prints
William Mulready 1786–1863 Born in Ennis, County Clare; one of the most admired painters in Victorian London and designer of the first pictorial postal envelope. Left The Toy-seller unfinished at his death. National Gallery of Ireland; Victoria and Albert Museum 2 prints
Roderic O'Conor 1860–1940 From County Roscommon; worked at Pont-Aven alongside Gauguin and built his pictures from parallel stripes of unmixed colour. Spent almost his whole career in France. Musée d'Orsay, Paris; National Gallery of Ireland; Tate 18 prints
James Arthur O'Connor 1792–1841 The defining painter of Irish Romantic landscape — storms, moonlight, small figures dwarfed by weather. Died poor in London. National Gallery of Ireland 5 prints
Aloysius O'Kelly 1853–1936 Painted the west of Ireland and North Africa with equal seriousness, and made the first widely seen images of Irish rural Catholic life. His brothers were Fenians; he spent decades abroad. National Gallery of Ireland 6 prints
William Orpen 1878–1931 The outstanding Irish portraitist of his period and an official war artist on the Western Front, where the work turned bleak enough to be refused. National Gallery of Ireland; Imperial War Museum; Tate 31 prints
Walter Frederick Osborne 1859–1903 Brought a plein-air, French-trained eye to Dublin streets, markets and back gardens. Died of pneumonia at forty-three. National Gallery of Ireland; Hugh Lane Gallery 8 prints
George Petrie 1790–1866 Painter, antiquarian and music collector — as responsible for recording Ireland's round towers, ruins and traditional airs as for painting them. Travelled the Aran Islands with the young Frederic William Burton. National Gallery of Ireland; Royal Irish Academy 1 print
Sarah Henrietta Purser 1848–1943 Trained at the Académie Julian and became the busiest portraitist in Ireland — she said she went through the aristocracy like the measles. Founded the stained-glass co-operative An Túr Gloine in 1903 and was the first woman elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. National Gallery of Ireland 7 prints
James Ward 1851–1924 Belfast-born painter, muralist and teacher; headmaster of the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art from 1907 to 1918, where Harry Clarke and Seán Keating passed through. Wrote Colour Harmony and Contrast and painted the murals in Dublin City Hall. Dublin City Hall 13 prints
Bartholomew Colles Watkins 1833–1891 Painted Ireland's remote coasts and mountains — Killary, the Antrim basalt — with topographical accuracy rather than Romantic exaggeration. National Gallery of Ireland 3 prints
Helen Mabel Trevor 1831–1900 Born in County Down; began serious training in her forties and spent most of her working life in Brittany and Paris, painting Breton women with the gravity usually reserved for society portraits. National Gallery of Ireland 3 prints
John Butler Yeats 1839–1922 The finest Irish portraitist of his generation and father of W.B. and Jack B. Yeats. Abandoned law for painting, chronically failed to finish commissions, and spent his last fourteen years in New York refusing to come home. National Gallery of Ireland 6 prints
Barra Ó Maoláin working today Contemporary Irish painter working in acrylic inks under the BÓM mark — the glens and coast of Antrim, and portraits of Irish writers and musicians. The original paintings are his own; the prints are made from them directly. Private collections 71 prints

If you are looking for the great Irish painters

There is no settled canon, but a few names come up in almost every account of Irish art, and most of them are here. For nineteenth-century landscape, James Arthur O'Connor and Bartholomew Colles Watkins. For the Victorian set-piece, Frederic William Burton and William Mulready. For portraiture, John Butler Yeats, Sarah Purser and William Orpen. For Irish painters who worked at the centre of European modernism, Roderic O'Conor at Pont-Aven and Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone in Paris. For decorative art, Harry Clarke, who has no real equal in Irish stained glass.

Four of the artists here are women who had to build careers around the institutions that would not have them: Purser, Jellett, Hone, Mildred Anne Butler, along with Rose Barton, Clare Marsh and Helen Mabel Trevor. Jellett and Hone founded the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943 in open criticism of the Royal Hibernian Academy; Purser was the first woman the Academy elected as a full member.

Where the originals are

The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin holds work by most of the artists on this list. For the works we print whose originals are in that collection — with dates, media, dimensions and accession numbers — see National Gallery of Ireland works we print. Roderic O'Conor's Breton Boy in Profile is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; James Ward's murals are in Dublin City Hall; Harry Clarke's Geneva Window is at the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach.

About the prints

Every print is open edition — there is no numbered run and nothing sells out. Prints are made on 250gsm archival matte paper, acid-free and FSC-certified, or on artist-grade canvas where a canvas edition is offered. Framed options are solid oak or ash with protective glazing, ready to hang. Each is made to order at the production hub nearest the delivery address — Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada or Australia — and shipped free worldwide.

Buy Irish Art is a small Irish studio in Glasthule, County Dublin, trading since 2016.