Richard Rothwell

Richard Rothwell, Ireland’s foremost nineteenth-century portrait painter, was born in 1801 to William Rothwell of Offaly, not the James of Athlone repeated in later histories. His family moved between Ferbane and Ballicknahee, where William farmed land leased from Thomas Horn and raised children who married into local households. Richard carried that practical Offaly background into his studios, painting faces that still appear in museums while the true shape of his birth remains hidden beneath layered memory.