The artist Graham Knuttel was a “true character”, witty, kind and loyal and lived his life to the fullest, his daughter, Kate Newman, told a civil service in Glasnevin cemetery on Monday.
Being his daughter, she said, had been a privilege and fun. “Wherever he is,” her father is loving all the attention he has been receiving in the media and online since he died two weeks ago, she said.
Ms Newman said her father had many characteristics that made him one of a kind but the one that jumped out was his generosity, “which knew no bounds”.
Mr Knuttel, who was 69, was a well-known Irish painter and sculptor whose work was displayed in fashionable restaurants and was collected by film stars and politicians. He was particularly well known for figurative paintings associated with the Celtic Tiger period.
In recent years, his daughter told those who gathered to celebrate his life, Mr Knuttel struggled with his health and received a new liver and a new kidney, with the latter being donated by his wife, Ruth Mathers.
Ms Newman said she wanted to thank Ms Mathers for a number of things, including agreeing to marry her father, being by his side and giving him a kidney, even though he complained “it was from the northside”.
Ms Mathers, in an address read out on her behalf, said she wanted to thank her husband for the “crazy, wonderful adventure” of their time together and asked him, “wherever you are, take it easy until I get there”.
At the outset of the service, Mr Knuttel’s three grandchildren, Ella, Rose and Nina Newman, brought up a radio, a paintbrush and some newspapers to symbolise how their grandfather always liked to work with the radio on and had a great interest in current affairs.
Ella, in a short comment to the gathering, said her grandfather had always made her laugh. “He was such a funny, kind, weird person,” she said to applause.
Civil celebrant Padraic Crawley said Mr Knuttel would get up early and go to his studio at the end of the garden, where he worked with the radio tuned to Newstalk “ever since Pat Kenny migrated to it”.
A number of friends addressed the service including writer and museum director Trevor White, who described the artist as a “workaholic and a reveller” and recalled how sometimes after Renards nightclub on South Frederick Street closed, Mr Knuttel would continue the festivities across the road where he lived at the time.
Agent Noel Kelly recalled his time working with Mr Knuttel over the years in several areas and said they quickly struck up a friendship after they met for the first time.
Mr Knuttel was one of only two Irish artists to have a piece in the international tapestry museum in Aubusson, France, and was not just an important Irish artist but an international one, he said.
He recalled the time he was involved in a show of Mr Knuttel’s work in Los Angeles that was attended by film stars Sylvester Stallone and Robert de Niro. Mr Knuttel, when he met Mr Stallone at the opening, said: “Jaysus, your face is stretched more than my canvases.”
The service concluded with the playing of a recording of We’ll Meet Again, by the late Johnny Cash.
Mr Knuttel is survived by his wife, his daughter, his grandchildren, his brother Peter, sister Valerie, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and other family members.
