Width: (entire as shown) 22" (56cm). Height: (entire) 17.25" (43.5cm). Unframed picture: Width: 12.75" (32.5cm). Height: 7.5" 919cm). 

€775.00

Renowned Irish Painter, French was born in Co. Roscommon, near Elphin, to an old local family. Although he spent some of his boyhood in England, he returned to Ireland to attend Trinity College, Dublin, and thereafter became one of the most famous Irishmen of his time. He began painting as an amateur, executing watercolours as he travelled the West while working as an engineer for the Cavan Board of Works from 1881-1889.

From 1890, though, he became a full-time artist and stage-performer: he was a prolific composer of popular songs and his stage act consisted of a repertoire of songs accompanied by trick sketching on large sheets of paper. He would execute lightning caricatures of audience members, or pictures which could be turned upside down to become something different. Although completely self-taught, he became a major celebrity, and by 1900 his act was touring to Canada, the USA, Europe and the Caribbean: as French himself put it, his performance combined 'brains, beauty, brushwork and banjos in one