George Charles Beresford

George Charles Beresford was born in 1864 at Drumlease in County Leitrim, the third child of Major Henry Marcus Beresford and Julia Ellen Maunsell. He left Ireland for school and engineering, but malaria in India broke that path and turned him toward art. He spent decades in a London studio, capturing the faces of writers, painters and politicians in sharp platinotype portraits that still arrive intact. The boy from Leitrim became the man who fixed other people's brilliance in silver and shadow.