With the death of the painter Charles Brady, aged 71, the Dublin art world has lost one of its best-liked and most colourful characters, as well as an artist of proven calibre. He had been suffering from cancer for some time but refused to act like an invalid and went on painting prolifically as well as leading his own gregarious lifestyle.
Brady was born in New York, in Manhattan, as he liked to point out. His parents were Irish-Americans and among his neighbours and cronies at Washington Heights were the Kissinger brothers. He got his art training at the Art Students League, where his teachers included Reginald Marsh and the graphic artist John Groth.
This was the period, however, when abstract expressionism was breaking into the consciousness of the American art world. Brady was one of the many young would-be artists who entered the Cedar Tavern to see the leading figures of abstract expressionism. He met de Kooning there, he saw Jackson Pollock but did not meet him, and he became friendly with Franz Kline. Later he said Kline had been "the daddy" of young painters like himself.
After a short spell in the US navy, Brady came to Ireland in the mid-1950s. His main motive seems to have been curiosity about the land of his ancestors. He lived for a time in Lismore, Co Waterford, and his actress-wife, Eelagh, came from there. Later he spent time in Spain and when he returned to Dublin he was a founder of the Independent Artists group. He played a leading role in their early exhibitions, held in the now vanished Building Centre.
Used to the excitement of New York, Brady sometimes complained that the Dublin art world was parochial and dull. Yet he fitted into it well. He showed regularly at the Taylor Galleries and also took part in the annual group exhibitions. He was as popular with writers as with painters and was often seen in the literary pubs such as McDaids and Grogans.
But social life was never allowed to interfere with his work. Brady was a full-time, committed professional painter who worked regular hours and had a large output. He deliberately restricted himself to a narrow range, mostly still-life and landscape. He was as surprised as anybody else when the Oireachtas Art Exhibition once awarded him its prize for historical painting for a picture which he had called Wolfe Tone's Hat Box.
His scale was usually small and he said that what interested him chiefly was "quality", that is to say, sheer painterly touch. It was a general consensus, especially among other painters, that he achieved this and very consistently. From 1976 to 1983 he lectured in painting at the National College of Art in Dublin. He was elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1994.
Brady kept in touch with New York and his old friends there and for many years he had a gallery there to show his work. Some recent New York reputations did not impress him, however, and he could be caustic about current developments there.
When his cancer began to show itself, he refused to surrender and painted as hard as ever, as well as keeping in touch with his friends. Eelagh was always a major support. A TV documentary film An American in Ireland made about him by Sean O Mordha was seen in 1995 on RTE, and I understand it is to be shown again shortly as a posthumous tribute.