This is my story of the ongoing creation of the portrait of IRA Volunteer Patrick Whelan of Ringsend, who was killed in action, aged just 22, during the Easter Rising of 1916.
Commissioned by his direct descendant, by coincidence an old friend of mine, Helen Larkin, and the relatives of this little-known fallen hero of the 1916 Rising in Dublin.
Helen had seen a few images from my unfinished series of the martyrs of 1916 and felt something should be done to remember the other fallen fighters, including her granduncle, Patrick Whelan.
I agreed and started the work in February 2022.
DIVIDED LOYALTIES:
A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS.
Patrick Whelan, the young IRA volunteer from Ringsend, Dublin, was killed by a British army sniper at Boland’s Mills during the Battle of Mount Street Bridge when the IRA units defending the bridge were attacked by the hundreds of British army troops who had landed in the port of Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) to reinforce the ranks of the British Army decimated during the Easter Rising of 1916.
The garrison was led by Eamonn DeValera, the only senior IRA man to survive this Rising and who later became president of this new Irish Republic.
The battle for Boland’s Mills turned into a dreadful slaughter of the attacking army, mostly inexperienced young conscripts who had never been away from home before.
The entire Sherwood Forester Regiment of the British Army was held off by a tiny number of brave volunteers who fired on them from the houses on all four corners of the bridges as they attacked across exposed ground.
In the end, they lost over 300 men in stupid, full-on suicidal frontal attacks across exposed areas with no real cover while the IRA picked them off like cherries.
Despite the ferocity of the attacks the IRA lost less than a dozen brave men, including their ferocious commander, IRA volunteer, Lieutenant Michael Malone, and fought the British army to a standstill.
Three weeks later Patrick Whelan’s older brother died fighting with the massed British navy Dreadnoughts at the Battle of Jutland, against the Kaiser’s powerful naval forces in the greatest sea battle of WW1.
In that single sea battle, the casualties on both sides numbered almost 10,000 souls.
Shakespeare’s tribute to a drowned British Admiral lost at sea
comes to mind when I think of this young man and the manner of his death and the deaths of his comrades in the cold North Sea and Baltic seas.
‘Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made.’
Imagine the loss to the family.
Two sons dead: one died heroically for Ireland in a rebellion against the British Crown in his native city, Dublin, the other died heroically for the British Empire and that same British Crown in a faraway and horrific war.
This tale of divided loyalties echoed through the ages in Ireland, where a position in the occupying British army often meant security for an entire family, with a steady dependable salary and army connections that could make life a whole lot better and easier. This was not an unusual situation for any Irish family, many were dependent on the ‘Queens Shilling’ for survival in those difficult times.
Before 1916 the ranks of the British army and navy were filled with Irish from top to bottom and there was a proud tradition of service to the Empire amongst many Irish families going back to Famine times when the only way to survive was to either emigrate or join the Crown forces.
After the rebellion and the execution of the leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising, atrocities like the North King Street Massacre shocked even the royalist Irish and the tide of public opinion turned against the British army.
Ordinary retired ex-British soldiers, shell-shocked young men who served in the trenches were ostracised by the new Free State and the Irish people and learned to stay silent about their own horrific experiences on the Western Front of WW1.
As I grew up I was very conscious of this blind hatred and dislike of anyone who served in an English uniform in WW1or WW2, it was bred into us by our education, our environment, our politicians and that taboo still resonates to this day, though we now honour our Irish fallen in all wars in the memorial gardens in Islandbridge.
I remember well my granny moaning about an ex WW1 veteran living nearby and her contempt for anyone Irish who joined the British armed forces so the condemnation of one son was probably matched in the locality by the hero-worship of the son who died for Ireland.
He is the one we commemorate.
It is Patrick Whelan who joined our patriot dead in 1916 and who I will attempt to draw and paint over the next few weeks for a remembrance portrait and installation in Ringsend where he lived, while the other brother, probably equally brave, remains unremembered.
A COMMISSION FROM HISTORY.
The very first problem that presented itself was the obvious one: where to find a likeness of this young man so I could begin to imagine the portrait of Patrick Whelan?
His descendant and the driving force behind this commission, Helen Larkin, sourced an image, the only one there is, but it was only a poor reproduction from a Mass card. This likeness would have to do but it also presented a real challenge.
The image was awful and hard to even read or make out. As an artist, all I saw was a bad photo with no detail no depth, just a bad mottled image from a mass card re-reproduced in the newspapers.
Since this is a commission by his descendants I had a few ideas, the most obvious being to ask Helen to collect any family images she could in case one of his descendants had his fine strong looks.
There is no doubt in my mind this young man was a fine-looking lad indeed with those JFK hooded eyelids, a strong jawline with superb well-etched, and full mouth plus a fine head of hair.
Still, it was a very poor photo so I used face recognition technology and a keen eye to slowly bring him to life.
On a Russian tech page, there is free Face Recognition technology so I downloaded it and used that to see what matches there might be to this very unusual-looking Irish lad and the results were interesting indeed.
Almost 45% of the images were of a lighter-skinned black man which would account for that very prominent mouth and hair but the eyes had the most interesting returns: In there was JFK and Bill Murray, both Irish Americans.
I nicked Bill Murray’s eyes for a composite photograph and the results were amazing and moving as this young man came alive, slowly but surely and I began to draw him, tracing his outlines with blue pencil and building up facial structure slowly but surely.
I was not optimistic at first as I had never had such poor reference material. The best comparison would be with a forensic facial reconstruction expert who solves crimes by rebuilding a face from a skeleton. Here I had a face ok but it was purely a starting point so my own skill set was going to be challenged.
After the first two blue line images were finished I felt had the basics of his face sorted but he looked far too old so it was back to the drawing board and this time the brief to myself was straightforward:
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify
Then I had an idea.
I dug out my old sketches of 18-year-old martyr Kevin Barry, executed by the British in 1922.
I wanted to make this authentic and in the style, I was using for the seven signatories of 1916 so I decided I would work on two drawings at the same time, of Kevin Barry and Patrick Whelan, to maintain the unity of style.
Working on Kevin Barry helped me enormously, brought me back to the period in my head, and helped me develop the drawing of Patrick Whelan in the style and design of my other 1916 work.
Then my friend Helen Larkin followed a lead and found what we think is a photo of Patrick’s older brother who died in the Battle Of Jutland three months after the death of his younger brother.
The eyes are similar but it is the mouth that looks so like the rather distinctive mouth of his younger brother that does it for me, rightly or wrongly.
Now I have all the preliminary work done it is time to start on the final pen and ink version of both Kevin Barry and Patrick Whelan.
