Galway City Museum has recently acquired a colourful pastel portrait of Galway writer Pádraic Ó Conaire by the artist Harry Kernoff (1900–1974).
Born in London, the son of a Russian-Jewish cabinetmaker, Harry Aaron Kernoff moved to Dublin aged fourteen. While apprenticed to his father, he attended evening classes at the Metropolitan School of Art on Kildare Street, where he studied under Seán Keating. Among his fellow pupils were Charles Lamb and Maurice MacGonigal.
In 1923, Kernoff became the first evening student to win the prestigious Taylor Scholarship, enabling him to pursue his artistic studies full-time. In the 1926 Census, he was recorded as an ‘Artist (Painter) Student’. That same year, he first exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, becoming a full member in 1935.
By the mid-1920s, Kernoff was moving in Dublin’s bohemian circles, frequenting literary and artistic haunts such as Davy Byrne’s and the Bailey on Duke Street and the Palace Bar on Fleet Street. Pádraic Ó Conaire was also a familiar figure in these establishments.
Kernoff also became a member of the Radical Club, a short-lived collective of progressive artists and writers, whose prominent members included several figures well known to Ó Conaire, notably writer Liam O’Flaherty and poets Austin Clarke and F. R. Higgins. Although by then living in Galway, Ó Conaire maintained an interest in the club, attending at least one meeting and writing to Higgins for updates.
Given their shared acquaintances and social haunts, it is entirely possible that Kernoff and Ó Conaire crossed paths in Dublin in the 1920s, although there is no firm evidence that they met.
Completed in 1933, five years after Ó Conaire’s death, Kernoff’s pastel has an almost caricatural quality. The writer is depicted with a weather-beaten, deeply lined face, prominent forehead and crooked nose. He wears his trademark cravat, with his hat perched high on his head.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kernoff produced portraits of several other notable cultural figures, including Hilton Edwards (1928), F. R. Higgins (1928), Austin Clarke (1931), Sean O’Casey (1931), and Liam O’Flaherty (1933).
The acquisition is a welcome addition to Galway City Museum’s Collection, complementing Albert Power’s celebrated statue of Ó Conaire. It will now be stored and cared for alongside the rest of the Museum Collection.
