Lot 41: William Magrath (1838-1918) At the Cottage Door

William Magrath (1838-1918) At the Cottage Door Watercolour, 37 x 28cm (14.5 x 11'') Signed and dated 1875 William McGrath was born in Cork and was educated at the Blue Coat School before moving to the Cork School of Art. It is thought he stowed away on a ship to New York and gradually made a name for himself as a painter of genre and landscape subjects. He made several return trips to Ireland circa 1879 into the early 1880's. There were three pictures included in the 1883 Cork exhibition - ''Thinking it Over (The Land Question)'', ''In the Green Fields of Erin'' and ''The Seaweed Girl'', which was included in the Whipping the Herring exhibition at The Crawford Gallery in 2006. Magrath is represented in several museums in the US, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, while his portrait of fellow Cork Painter Thomas Hovenden is in the Museum of Fine Arts in San Fransisco. There are nine works by McGrath in the Crawford Art Gallery including ''A Son of the Soil''.