THE ARTIST MICHAEL O'RYAN

I've stepped away from my half finished painting and am back in Family Tree mode this week, so...

This is my Great Grandfather, Michael O'Ryan, born in 1895, with his daughters, my grandmother Angela on the left (his right) and her sister Doreen. He also had three more daughters; Philie, Eileen and Nancy. He also had one son, Sonny (Senan) but he got pneumonia at 13 months old and died. My grandmother said that his fever had just broken late at night when the doctor finally arrived and told Mamma Ryan to keep him warm. But one of the woman who had come to help her out decided to give the child a wash "to freshen him up" and by morning when the doctor arrived again he was dead. He said the child died as a direct result of the wash, if that's even possible?...but that's what he said.

This photo was taken around 1932 in Lahinch, Co.Clare, Ireland and was probably one of those occasions when he stole himself away from his attic studio for a bit of family time. They would have travelled by horse and trap in those days. I believe he knew someone who owned one, and it's quite likely that the use of it may have been in payment for a painting job he would have done for them. I think that my great grandmother, Mary Jo McCaffrey (Muddie Ryan as we called her; a derivative of the word 'mother') whom I knew and have memories of, may have been a very patient woman, as it seems that my great grandfather was a bit lacking in savvy and would accept the most ludicrous things as payment for his work. There's a story in my family of how he once did a painting job for the nuns in the Reparation Convent. He painted the ceilings and statues with gold leaf, which I believe is still there to see today. I'll have to take the time to check it out someday soon. Well, the story goes that he came home from that job with a worthless glass vase as payment and my great grandmother nearly hit him over the head with it! The vase was subsequently passed down to her daughter Angela when she died and again to her daughter, my aunt who says she remembers my grandmother saying that she would 'run away' if ever it were broken, so it must have meant a lot to her. The vase has now been in my aunt's care for the last thirteen years, since my grandmother died and it's still safe and sound...have a look!

Michael O'Ryan had a bad accident at work once and broke many of his bones after falling from a ladder and for which he received some compensation. Soon after his recovery, and possibly as a result of depression following such a bad accident and the harrowing death of his only son, he became a good customer in the local pub and made lots of new 'friends' because of his newfound wealth. Luckily Muddie Ryan had the smarts to send her daughter Angela, my grandmother, to the pub after him to get some of the money back before he drank it all!! Well done Muddie Ryan!

Mamma Ryan would also pocket any money that she would get when people came to the house to pay him; maybe sixpence, for paintings that they would have asked him to paint for them. Apparently, he had no idea how talented he was but people would be only too glad to pay him for his paintings, even though they wouldn't have had very much money back then. I wish I had one of his paintings. Would you believe, not one of them is still within the family and I have no idea where they are now. Such a shame.

Have a look at the length of his fingers, they nearly look like paintbrushes themselves and I would imagine that they were discoloured...yellow from the many cigarettes he chain-smoked all day long while painting. As I've mentioned in my 'About Me' page, he used to be a painter/signwriter and its said that the people he worked for at one stage, Eclesiastical Painters, didn't allow smoking on the job, I expect because of the highly flammable properties in the paints of that time. It seems though, that he was the exception to that rule. Apparently, nobody took any notice, or else didn't even realise that he was smoking because he was known to always have a 'fag' (as cigarettes were referred to in those days) permanently stuck to his lip and people wouldn't have recognised him if it wasn't there!!

I've been told he was a 'hands-on' father apart from those times when he was drinking or locked away painting. My grandmother, his daughter Angela loved him dearly, and it was a traumatic time for the family when he got cancer of the throat and Tuberculosis and spent the last eleven months of his life in a local city home with no hope of recovery, before his death in 1952, aged 57 Yrs.