The only 'approved' portrait of Robert Emmet went missing without trace, despite being given to the State on condition it would hang in the Dáil. Niamh O'Sullivan has tracked it down
You would not expect to have much difficulty in finding a painting once declared to be the only authoritative painting of Robert Emmet and given to the people of Ireland on condition that it hang in that most accountable of places, Dáil Éireann. But at the start of this, the 200th anniversary year of Emmet's death, the portrait's whereabouts were a mystery.
In 1897 Dr Thomas Addis Emmet (grand-nephew of Robert Emmet) commissioned John Mulvany, who he regarded as one of the best living Irish artists, to paint the definitive portrait of the great Irish patriot. On its completion, Dr Emmet wrote to Mulvany confirming that the portrait "is, beyond question, the only likeness of my great-uncle which is satisfactory \ which expresses any distinctive character or shares a family likeness".
Throughout the centenary of Emmet's death, Mulvany's image was used in newspapers, and on commemorative brochures and programmes, ultimately featuring in the Gaelic American in 1909 as "The Approved Picture". When Dr Emmet later saw a contemporary portrait of Emmet by the artist Henry Brocas, he modified his insistence on the absolute authority of the Mulvany portrait. Nevertheless, he continued to see it as the "living personification" of the spirit of Emmet.
Shortly before he died, believing that there was a real danger of the painting "passing into unsympathetic hands", Dr Emmet charged Thomas Tuite with its safe-keeping. Tuite was a republican, Irish nationalist and American Civil War veteran, librarian and friend of Dr Thomas Addis Emmet, as well as a staunch supporter of John Mulvany.
Tuite decided to place the painting "in possession of that Ireland and that people typified in the courage and endurance of Robert Emmet". When handing it over to the nation in 1925, Tuite observed that "the time may not have arrived when Ireland can inscribe his epitaph but the progress already made in our time makes me cherish the conviction that the time is not far distant when the spirit of Robert Emmet that shines through this canvas will look down upon an united and independent nation". When presenting the painting to the State, he did so on the stipulation that it hang on a wall of Dáil Éireann or the Executive Council Chamber, charging President Cosgrave, as head of the Free State, with ensuring that this condition be met.
In emphasising its authenticity, Tuite conceded that "to some it may be forbidding, but it represents the stern, unbending spirit of an Ireland whose head was 'bloody but unbowed'." Having studied James Petrie's sketches and death mask (executed just before and after Emmet's execution), he believed Mulvany's painting exuded more character than either of the contemporary images of Emmet sketched by John Comerford and Henry Brocas.
Although Mulvany was a consummate portraitist (noted for his portraits of Civil War generals, bishops, newspaper magnates, Native Americans, politicians and entrepreneurs), it is hard to warm to this image of Emmet as a man; its success would appear to lie in his portrayal as a revolutionary, insofar as, according to Tuite, "Supreme contempt for the farce of English law is the dominant note and it will remain for all time while this painting is in possession of the Irish people, a characteristic portrayal of the indomitable spirit of an unconquerable Ireland".
In accepting the painting, Patrick McGilligan, then Minister of Industry and Commerce, acknowledged that "it would be a great inspiration to the Irish people to have this historic painting before their eyes continually as an evidence of the link that binds the nation to a great and glorious past and the ties that bind Irish-Americans to their homeland".
The portrait was tracked down through contacts made at a recent Irish Studies conference in the University of Notre Dame in Chicago, which led to the descendants of Thomas Tuite, notably his granddaughter, Maureen Haberer. From family information, the painting was traced to the Dáil, and from there to the National Gallery, who had taken possession of the painting in 1962. Despite the fact that a Tuite descendant, who made a long-cherished pilgrimage to see the painting in the gallery in the early 1970s, identified the portrait, surprisingly it was then sent to the Irish embassy in Rome and ascribed to the earlier, unconnected George Mulvany. It hangs on a wall there to this day. The attribution, and somewhat casual subsequent decisions concerning the location of the painting, which contravened the conditions of the gift, were made at a time before record-keeping in the National Gallery was as rigorous as it is today.
The rediscovery of this important painting, and the correction of its attribution to an artist unjustly long-forgotten, coincides fortuitously with the bicentenary of the death of Emmet, and occurs in anticipation of the centenary of Mulvany's death in 2006.
A spokeswoman for the National Gallery says the Gallery has no plans at present to put the painting on show.
Dr Niamh O'Sullivan is an art historian at the National College of Art and Design. She is currently researching late 19th century Irish-American art.