Aloysius O'Kelly

Aloysius O'Kelly was born in Peterson's Lane, Dublin, on 3 July 1853, the youngest son of a blacksmith and the latest thread in a family already woven with sculpture and politics. His mother pushed him toward art, his uncle John Lawlor took him as an apprentice in London, and his brother James dragged him into the dangerous orbit of Parnell and the Land League. He carried that tension into every canvas: coastal light in Brittany, cabin mass in Connemara, city life in New York, and a painted Huckleberry Finn for Mark Twain himself.