19 Facts About Frank O'Meara

Francis Joseph O'Meara was an Irish artist known for his Impressionist landscape painting.

Frank O'Meara was born in Carlow 30 March 1853, to Thomas and Sarah O'Meara.

The youngest of seven children, his father was a medical doctor, and his grandfather Dr Barry Edward Frank O'Meara was Napoleon's physician on St Helena.

The family lived at 37 Dublin Street, Carlow, and Frank O'Meara likely attended St Mary's Knockbeg College.

From 1869 to 1871 Frank O'Meara lived in Dublin, when he may have continued his education or received private art lessons.

Two of Frank O'Meara's siblings died young, and his mother died in 1873.

Frank O'Meara became one of the first students of Carolus Duran at 81 Boulevard Montparnasse, working alongside English, French and American students including John Singer Sargent.

Frank O'Meara stayed in Grez-sur-Loing for almost 11 years, with brief periods away during the winter or for exhibitions.

Frank O'Meara favoured painting en plein air, preferring low grey evening light.

The Osbournes and Frank O'Meara developed a friendship, with the pair visiting galleries and museums in Paris, and painting together.

Whilst many of his friends left Grez, Frank O'Meara stayed, living at Hotel Chevillon and continuing to paint.

Frank O'Meara was a popular companion amongst the English-speaking painters, including John Lavery, William Stott and Carl Larsson.

Frank O'Meara exhibited Reverie in "A collection of pictures by British artists from the Paris salon" at the Fine Art Society in London in July 1882, and some more work was shown at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1883 and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1884,1885 and 1887.

Frank O'Meara was a very slow painter, producing an average of just 3 pictures a year.

Frank O'Meara returned to Carlow in the spring of 1888 and died on 15 October that year, aged thirty-five, having suffered from malaria for a number of years.

Frank O'Meara is regarded as never having reached his full potential as an artist due to his long illness and premature death.

In 1879, Frank O'Meara featured in one Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition with the painting The old old story.

Frank O'Meara's work was included in The peasant in nineteenth-century French artn The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 1983, The Irish impressionists at the National Gallery of Ireland in 1984 and Ulster Museum in 1985, and Frank O'Meara and his contemporaries Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, and Ulster Museum in 1989.

Frank O'Meara's work has been described as being rediscovered in the late 1990s, with the prices of his paintings at auction reaching unforeseen prices.