How can an artist who, according to Walt Whitman, tells a more grim, more sublime story than either Homer or Shakespeare be so thoroughly forgotten?
How can a painter who outsold most of his contemporaries be obliterated from the canon of art? How can the main body of work of an artist, whose most famous painting went on a 17-year tour, be substantially lost?
Born in Moynalty, Co Meath c.1839, John Mulvany emigrated to the US as a youth. Having studied informally at the National Academy of Design in New York, he worked in Chicago as a photographer and artist, losing his studio in the Great Fire. He was with the Union army during the Civil War, returning pictorial records to newspapers in New York. After the war, he went to Europe to study in Dusseldorf, Munich and Antwerp. On his return to the US, he worked extensively in the west, where he executed such paintings as The Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief, shown to great acclaim at the National Academy of Design in 1876, Trappers of the Yellowstone and Lynch-Law, A Comrade's Appeal. In Kansas City, he spent two years engrossed in the prototypical rendition of Custer's Last Rally (1881), ultimately selling to Heinz, reputedly for a staggering $25,000. Whitman eulogised its "native", "autochtonic" qualities, while the Louisville Courier-Journal pronounced Mulvany nothing less than "a genius".
Strong nationalist views were inculcated during Mulvany's early schooling in Ireland. His Irish political pictures, such as the Battle of Aughrim and The Anarchists, exemplify key political events in Irish history. In researching the Battle of Aughrim, Mulvany applied to the Tower of London for permission to study the arms and uniforms of the time. While waiting for approval, he was advised to get out of London fast. Days later, in January 1885, a series of bombs exploded in the Tower, courtesy of Clan na Gael. According to Mulvany himself, had he not fled, he would have spent the rest of his life in jail.
In his later years, he was described as "an eccentric" and "a drunkard". Nonetheless, he continued to work, producing The Anarchists, the political painting that would appear, in more ways than one, to have been his undoing. The painting depicts six men cutting cards to select the one who would murder Dr P.H. Cronin. Cronin, a Clan na Gael insider, was beaten to death in Chicago with an ice-hatchet to prevent him exposing the nefarious activities of the "Triangle", a faction of Clan Na Gael led by Alexander O'Sullivan. Mulvany's painting may have rendered the protagonists identifiable. Rather than committing suicide, as reported, Mulvany may have been "assisted" to his death in 1906.
Other than an invaluable monograph by Mulvany's great grand-niece, Anne Weber, nothing contemporary had been written about this fascinating Irish-American artist. If you can help locate any of his paintings, please contact Dr Niamh O'Sullivan, e-mail: nosullivan@ireland.com