Cork 2005: The retrospective exhibition of the work of the sculptor and painter Joseph Higgins, an artist who never received a commission during his life, promises to be one of the most important of Cork's European Capital of Culture events.
It was only after his death that his son-in-law, sculptor Seamus Murphy, was able to arrange the casting of his models into bronze. Yet in his catalogue essay Peter Murray, director of the Crawford Gallery, writes that Higgins "is perhaps the finest figurative sculptor to have emerged in Cork since John Hogan". Although only 19 of his sculptures survive, the exhibition includes many other examples of his work in oils, water colours and woodcarving, from furniture to a set of toy animals for his own children.
Born in Ballincollig in 1885, Higgins enrolled at the Crawford School of Art while working at the tea and coffee merchants Newsome and Sons; at night school he met fellow student Katherine Turnbull, whom he married in 1915. Both gifted artists, they were rewarded by medals and scholarships during their student days. While still attending night classes, Higgins modelled a portrait head of Daniel Corkery, a fellow member of the Gaelic League.
Peter Murray traces the contemporary friendships and influences on Higgins as a sculptor and carver. In fact many Cork people are already familiar with his work, although perhaps without knowing that it was he who created the charming Boy with a Boat in Fitzgerald's Park, donated to the city by his daughter Maighread Murphy and her husband Seamus. "His portraits of children evoke the work of Rodin," writes Murray, "but in their extraordinary sensitivity even more the work of Camille Claudel, artistic muse of Rodin."
Boy with a Boat, modelled in clay and then entitled Charlie, won the highest award in the 1909 National Competition and Higgins won more awards from 1910 to 1914 and began to exhibit with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1912. In 1913 he took a job as a travelling art teacher with the County Cork Technical Instruction Committee and after his marriage settled in Youghal.
Higgins painted, modelled or carved portraits of his immediate family. The limewood used in some items came from a fallen tree in the garden of a neighbouring manse. He also made life-size portraits, modelled in clay, of local fishermen, two of which were acquired by the Crawford Gallery on the recommendation of Daniel Corkery and later cast in bronze.
Among his best-known work is the head of Michael Collins now at UCC, originally carved in wood after the sculptor had seen Collins speaking at the great pro-Treaty meeting on the Grand Parade in Cork in 1922. His paintings lovingly record the local scenery and events of Youghal as well as his family and friends, but he died only a year after completing his sculpture portrait of Professor WFP Stockley, for which he won the bronze medal at the Tailteann Games in 1924.
A man who never travelled from his native county and never asked for more than £35 for his Academy exhibits, Higgins, according to art historian Hilary Pyle, was "one of the most original and excellent sculptors of the period". And in his introduction to the catalogue (Gandon, €30) the sculptor Ken Thompson describes the exhibition as an example of the old saying that "everything hidden, revealing time brings to light".
• The exhibition opens in the Public Museum on Oct 19
