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RONALD OSSORY DUNLOP RA
Ronald Ossory Dunlop:
Irish author and painter in oil of landscapes, seascapes, figure studies, portraits and still life;
described by Frances Spalding, British art historian, critic and biographer,
as an 'alla prima' painter of traditional subjects.
Dunlop was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a Scottish-Irish Quaker family.
Living in Ireland, London, and briefly the US, he exhibited widely, and achieved fame in his lifetime.
He was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1950. And his work is instantly recognisable.
However, as he generally signed his work "Dunlop" and his correspondence "R O Dunlop",
his given names were not widely known.
Dunlop's work is in a number of public galleries,
including the Tate and National Portrait Gallery.
He studied at Manchester School of Art, at Wimbledon College of Art and in Paris, as well as London,
and associated with a group of young artists who exhibited at the Hurricane Lamp Gallery in Chelsea.
He became a prolific exhibitor, venues including the Royal Academy, the New English Art Club,
Leicester and Redfern Galleries, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Hibernian Academy
and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.
He maintained his Irish connections, returning periodically to paint in Dublin,
and submitting a number of works to the RHA in the 1940s and 1950s.
His first one-man show (1928) was at the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street, London.
In 1923 he had founded the Emotionist Group of writers and artists,
and his own work is characterised by a painterly exuberance.
In 1931, he joined The London Group (of artists).
Most of his life was spent in England, latterly at Barnham, West Sussex, close to Chichester
Dunlop's mother, Eleanor (née Fitzpatrick) was herself a watercolour artist.
His father Daniel Nicol Dunlop (1868–1935), was a great friend of
W. B. Yeats, James Stephens and George Russell.
Yeats, Russell and Daniel Nicol Dunlop had together published The Irish Theosophist
from the home of Eleanor's father, the Shakespearean scholar R. H. Fitzpatrick.
Thus Dunlop grew up surrounded by the seminal figures of the Irish Literary Renaissance,
in an atmosphere smacking of mysticism and Spiritualism.
Public Collections :
Tyne & Wear Museums, England
Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, England
Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland
Tate Gallery, London, UK
Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue, London, UK
National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia
In addition to painting, Dunlop was a prolific author, his books including :
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)
Struggling with Paint: Some Reminiscences (London, 1956, autobiography)
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