Life
1837-1864; b. Dublin, ed. Prior Park, Bath; studied under Henry O’Neill, RA, exhibited RA 1858-63, and illustrated leading periodicals including Good Words, London Society, Once and Week, and Punch; drew for Once a Week, Punch and Cornhill Magazine; his best known painting, ‘The Sick Call,’ showing a clergyman being taken across water in Holland to a dying man’s home, was exhibited at RA in 1863 and is now held in the National Gallery of Ireland. DIB ODNB
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Notes
Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Biretta” makes reference to Matthew Lawless: ‘But in the end it’s as likely to be the one / In Matthew Lawless’s painting, / The Sick Call, / Where the scene is out on a river and it’s all / Solid, pathetic and Irish Victorian. // In which case, however, his reverence wears a hat […] Sad for his worthy life and fit for it.’ (Seeing Things, 1991, p.26.)
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