Lot 16: ALOYSIUS O'KELLY B. 1853

EDMUND O'DONOVAN AS AN ORIENTAL

56.5 by 40.5cm.; 22¼ by 16in.

signed and inscribed in arabic l.r.: aloysius O'Kelly

pencil, watercolour and gouache

EXHIBITED

Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery, Aloysius O'Kelly, November 1999 - January 2000, no.7, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue.

LITERATURE

Niamh O'Sullivan, 'Lines of Resistence, the O'Kelly Brothers in the Sudan', Eire - Ireland, Fall, 1999, illustrated.

NOTE

Edmund O'Donovan was a particular friend of Aloysius and his brother James and was well known as an Irish Fenian journalist. They had all been together in Egypt in 1883 when O'Kelly first visited Cairo having been appointed journalist for the Pictorial World to record the war in Sudan between the Nationalist Rebels led by the Mahdi in their Jihad against the Anglo-Egyptian army. Major-General Hicks' division of the Anglo-Egyptian army was defeated by the Rebels in November 1883 and O'Donovan lost his life in the skirmish.