MEATHMAN'S DIARY: Discovering art treasures at Usher's auction

I do enjoy a mooch around Oliver Usher's auctions. You never know what you would come across as people clear out their houses or collections, or when a big house is downsizing.
At the viewing of the contents of Dowdstown House in Dalgan Park last week, I noticed an old biblical scene in the corner of an office, for sale in the clearance auction. 
Looking closer at the aged piece, I notice it was signed by Francis S Walker, a name which rung a bell.
I went home to look him up in a local history book I had worked on over 20 years ago in Dunshaughlin. It was indeed the same man.
Francis Sylvester Walker was one of the country's best-known illustrators during the latter half of the 19th century. He was born in Dunshaughlin in 1848, a son of Thomas Walker, who was master of the workhouse there, and his wife, Ann, a member of the Delany family of Clavinstown Mill on the Dunsany Road. In later life, he often visited his relatives, the Delanys of Rathfeigh Mill, during his walking tours of Ireland.
Francis studied at both the RDS and RHA schools, and in 1868, at the age of 20, he went to London to work for the Dalziel Brothers, the engravers and publishers. He rapidly made a name for himself as an engraver, etcher and an illustrator. His work became very well known through the Illustrated London News and The Graphic. He joined the Royal Academy in 1870, and exhibited his paintings there for 40 years. Walker was elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1879, and a member of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in 1897. Francis Walker's principal claim to fame probably lies in his work for travel books, of which the two best known are 'The Thames from Oxford to the Tower,', and 'Killarney, its Lakes and Falls'.
Among his paintings on public display in 1997 were 'Bow Street, East London', (1895), 'Killiney Bay looking towards Bray' (1904), owned by the National Gallery of Ireland, and a magnificent painting owned by the RHA Gallagher Gallery, 'St Columbcille in exile welcomes the wild birds that cross the sea from Ireland', painted in 1906.
Thirty of his plates are in the print department of the British Museum, and his 'Covent Garden' hangs in Leeds Art Gallery. Walker died in Hampstead in April 1916, at the time Ireland was rising.
So, off I went to the Usher Auction on Saturday morning. This was an effort as we had said farewell to departing Meath Chronicle company secretary Mary Smyth with a late night before. But it was worth the effort.
For the princely sum of €60, I acquired 'The Descent of Our Lord from the Cross' signed by Francis S Walker, and stamped, and nicely framed behind glass. Maybe it will be my Caravaggio!

POSTSCRIPT: A man born the month after Francis Walker's death was John Francis Brody, known around Trim as Dr Jack Brody, as featured in this column when penned two weeks ago by my colleague, Jimmy Geoghegan. Jimmy wrote that Dr Brody liked his sport. However, there was one he frowned upon.
When my mother was brought into him with a head injury during the 1965 Leinster Junior Camogie Final in Trim, during which she got a belt of a stray hurley, he declared to her that “camogie was no game for ladies.” She still deigns to disagree, and her only regret is that she was not in the photograph of the winning Meath team with the cup, as she was having her head seen to!

 

(First published Meath Chronicle print edition, Saturday 7th March 2020)