Nicholas Joseph Crowley
(b Dublin, 6 Dec 1819; d London, 4 Nov 1857). Irish painter and designer of stained glass. He began his training at the Dublin Society's Art Schools in 1827 (aged eight) and in 1837, when only eighteen, was made a Royal Hibernian Academician. He was a highly successful portrait painter and received much of his patronage from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which had been liberated as a result of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829). From the age of ten or eleven he exhibited portraits of these senior churchmen at the newly formed Royal Hibernian Academy, and he showed regularly there until his early death. His portraits of distinguished leaders of Irish Catholic society include that of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin (1846; Dublin, N.G.). Crowley also designed stained-glass windows for a number of the new post-Emancipation Roman Catholic churches in Dublin, for example the Baptisterium in St Nicholas of Myra (1840). In 1836 Crowley moved to London, where he exhibited at the British Institution (1839-57). Most of these paintings were based on episodes from the sentimental literature of the time, a good example being a portrait of the actor Tyrone Power as Connor O'Gorman (1838; exh. British Institution, 1840; ex-Tyrone Guthrie priv. col.) in Anna Maria Hall's The Groves of Blarney. These genre pieces have a distinctive charm that is probably derived from a thorough knowledge of Wilkie and Mulready. Crowley's Invitation, Hesitation and Persuasion (c. 1846; Dublin, N.G.) shows a successful merging of group portraiture and theatrical sentiment. Broadly painted, animated and colourful, his figures are charming but rarely go further than a glossy surface observation.
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