Description
History remembers the names it chooses to remember. This collection tells the full story.
Eight portraits spanning the breadth of 1916 — from the executed leaders whose names every schoolchild knows, to the ordinary fighters and extraordinary women the State worked hard to forget. James Connolly, the workers’ champion who was shot strapped to a chair. Padraic Pearse, who read the Proclamation aloud and surrendered to save civilian lives. Sir Roger Casement, the humanitarian knighted for exposing atrocities in the Congo, then hanged for daring to fight for his own people. Countess Markievicz, who fought at Stephen’s Green, was sentenced to death, and told the court she wished they’d had the decency to shoot her.
And then the ones they tried to erase.
Patrick Whelan. A 22-year-old dock worker from Ringsend. Killed by a British sniper at Boland’s Mills during the Battle of Mount Street Bridge. No other portrait of him exists — Jim worked from a single faded mass card photograph to bring him back to life. The O’Rahilly, who spent the weekend before the Rising driving across Ireland trying to stop it — then showed up at the GPO on Monday morning because he couldn’t let his comrades fight alone. He was killed leading a charge on Moore Street, and wrote a note to his wife as he lay dying. Dr. Kathleen Lynn, who took command at City Hall when Seán Connolly was killed, served as both doctor and commander, and later founded St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital. Elizabeth O’Farrell, the nurse who carried Pearse’s surrender to the British — and was then airbrushed out of the photograph, leaving Pearse with four legs and O’Farrell with nothing but a pair of feet visible at the edge of the frame.
Elizabeth O’Farrell
After six days of fighting, it was Elizabeth O’Farrell — a nurse, a midwife, a member of Cumann na mBan — who walked out under a white flag to deliver Pearse’s surrender to General Lowe. She went back and forth between the British lines three separate times, carrying surrender orders to the garrisons still fighting across Dublin.
You’ve seen the photograph. Pearse standing before General Lowe, hands at his sides. Look closer — he has four legs. Two of those feet belong to Elizabeth O’Farrell, standing right beside him. The rest of her was airbrushed out.
That photograph became a symbol. Not of surrender, but of how the new Irish State treated the women who had fought beside the men. Denied their pensions. Written out of the story. O’Farrell spent her life as she had before the Rising — as a nurse and midwife, quietly serving the people of Dublin. Her lifelong companion Julia Grenan, who had also been in the GPO, was with her when she died in 1967.
I created this portrait for the Moore Street Preservation Trust. The only image I had to work from was a faded old press photograph. She was a young woman in 1916 and I wanted to show that — without glamourising her. She’d seen too much for that.
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Patrick Whelan
Patrick Whelan was 22 years old. A dock worker from Ringsend. A member of the Irish Volunteers under de Valera’s command. Just before the Rising, he was sent to Kerry and came back with devastating news — Casement had been captured, the German arms were lost.
He fought anyway. On Easter Monday he was one of just 14 Volunteers who occupied Boland’s Mill. On Wednesday, a British sniper killed him during the Battle of Mount Street Bridge — the bloodiest engagement of the entire Rising for the British forces.
No one outside his family and the people of Ringsend knew his story. There was no portrait, no monument beyond a housing block on Thorncastle Street that bears his name. The only image that existed was a barely readable photograph from a mass card.
His descendant, Helen Larkin — an old friend of mine — asked me to bring him back. All I had was that mass card photo. It was like forensic reconstruction. But slowly, over weeks of drawing, Patrick Whelan came back to life.
He represents every ordinary worker who was the fighting backbone of the Rising and was lost to history.
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Dr. Kathleen Lynn
When Seán Connolly was shot dead at City Hall on the first day of the Rising, Dr. Kathleen Lynn — Chief Medical Officer of the Irish Citizen Army — didn’t just tend the wounded. She took command.
Doctor and soldier. Suffragette and revolutionary. She’d been working soup kitchens with Connolly and Markievicz during the 1913 Lockout and had been radicalised by what she saw — the poverty, the exploitation, the children who had nothing. After the Rising, she channelled everything into the cause she’d always cared about most: in 1919 she founded St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, dedicated to the children of Dublin’s poorest families.
Lynn fought on every front that mattered — suffrage, labour, nationalism — and the State repaid her the same way it repaid all the women of 1916: by pretending she didn’t exist.
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The O’Rahilly
Here’s the thing about The O’Rahilly that gets me every time. He spent the entire weekend before the Rising driving across the country telling Volunteer commanders to stand down. He was against it. He thought it was madness.
Then on Easter Monday morning, he turned up at the GPO in his motor car and joined the fight. He told Countess Markievicz: “It is madness, but it is glorious madness.”
On Friday, with the GPO burning, he volunteered to lead a charge up Moore Street to clear a retreat route. A British machine gun cut him down. He dragged himself into a doorway — into what is now O’Rahilly Parade — and wrote a last note to his wife Nancy on the back of a letter from his son.
“It was a good fight anyhow.”
He bled to death in that doorway. He was the only leader of the Rising to be killed in action.
I painted The O’Rahilly because his house on Herbert Park Road — a building that should have been protected as a 1916 heritage site — was demolished in the middle of the night by developers. The council did nothing. That demolition is part of a pattern: the bullet-scarred trees on O’Connell Street, the Mount Street Bridge positions, Moore Street itself. They want us to forget.
We won’t.
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This is a limited edition of just 25.
Printed on A4 Hahnemühle William Turner textured fine art paper.
The James Connolly print is signed by Jim FitzPatrick.
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