Patrick Hennessy

Born in 1915, Patrick Hennessy was an Irish realist painter renowned for his still lifes, landscapes and trompe l'oeil paintings.

After his father was killed at the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, his mother remarried and moved the family to Scotland. It was here that he began to show a talent for drawing and painting. In 1933 he enrolled at the Dundee School of Art, studying under James McIntosh Patrick RSA who remembered the young Hennessy as 'outstanding'. He graduated with a First Class Distinction in 1937 and after completing a post graduate diploma he was awarded the Annual Travelling Scholarship in 1938 allowing him to continue his studies in Paris and Italy.

In 1939 Hennessy returned to Ireland, where he joined the Society of Dublin Painters and exhibited frequently including at annual shows by the R.H.A. Time magazine selected Hennessy as one of Irelands outstanding painters in 1947, and in 1950 one of his paintings was selected for the Contemporary Irish Painting exhibition that toured North America. This helped Hennessy gain recognition from the American public and art critics for his work.

From 1956 onwards his work was shown predominantly in the Ritchie Hendriks gallery in Dublin. After an exhibition of his works in Chicago in 1966, the North American market became more accessible and lucrative and he began selling more paintings in the U.S. than in Ireland or the U.K.

Later in life Hennessy lived and worked in Morocco before moving to Portugal. Hennessy died in London in 1980.

Examples of his work can be found in the public collections of the Crawford Art Gallery; the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Limerick City Gallery of Art; the National Gallery of Ireland; and in the collections of the University of Limerick, University College Cork, and University College Dublin.