double identity aloysius o'kelly and arthur oakley

Irish Arts Review

Double Identity Aloysius O'Kelly and Arthur OakleyAuthor(s): Julian CampbellSource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 16 (2000), pp. 81-85Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20493111 .

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Double Identity

Aloysius O'Kelly and Arthur Oakley

Julian Campbell has discovered that an Irish artist had an American alter ego

Jn 1893, the Irish artist, Aloysius O'Kelly (1851-1928), exhib

ited a watercolour entitled A Game of Draughts at the Royal

Hibernian Academy. The following year, 1894, he again showed

the picture (which is probably identical with a painting of the

same title that he exhibited at the London Royal Academy in

1889) at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition.' In the catalogues of

both these exhibitions, O'Kelly gave his address as '86 Bolsover

Street, London'. By coincidence, a painting with an identical

title was exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists the

same year, 1893-94. It too was painted by an artist who lived at

86 Bolsover Street, London; but that artist was called 'Oakley',

Arthur Oakley"

Arthur Oakley, who is said to have been born in New York, is

mentioned in various editions of American Art Annual and

Who's Who in American Art as a former pupil in Paris of Bonnat

and Bouguereau.3 He showed in occasional exhibitions in

America. Becoming a student at the Academie Julian in Paris in

1901 where he was a pupil of Bouguereau and Gabriel Ferrier,4

he is listed in Catherine Fehrer's Index of Students at the

Acade'mie Julian5 but not, surprisingly, in Mantle Fielding's com

prehensive Dictionary of American Artists. Nor, for that matter, is

he included in either of the standard encyclopedias of artists'

biographies, Benezit or Thieme-Becker. His address in Paris was

at 13 rue St Sulpice6 but by 1904 he had moved to Brittany

where, from an address at the Hotel de France, Concarneau, he

sent paintings to the Paris Salon in 1904 (Conte' de Grand-pere)

and again in 1905 (La Bonne Aventure and Interieur Breton).' In

the Salon catalogue of 1904, Oakley listed Bouguereau and

Ferrier as his teachers; in the catalogue for 1905, he added

Bonnat to the list.

Oakley's painting, La Bonne Aventure (Fig 4) was reproduced as

a small black and white postcard. One of these cards, on which

the artist has written a brief message in a flowing hand - "a

Mademoiselle Delobbe avec les compliments du peintre Oakley'

(Fig 4)8 - is in the archives of the Musee de Pont-Aven. The

picture is of an interior with five young girls in Breton costume

consulting an old fortune-teller. The painting was also exhibited

under its English title, Fortune Telling, at the Chicago Art

Institute in 1905. Another of Oakley's paintings, dating from

1906 and probably painted at Pont-Aven once hung in the

Pension Gloanac there.9 It shows a seated Breton girl and is

painted in a broad, simple style with touches of pure colour,

such as blue and red (Fig 1).

Aloysius O'Kelly, who was born in Dublin, had also studied in

Paris; but that was in the 1870s as a pupil of Gerome at the

Ecole des Beaux Arts, some thirty years before Oakley joined the Academie Julian in 1901. Coincidentally, O'Kelly had

lodged at 4 Rue St Sulpice,'0 just across the road from where

Oakley was later to live. O'Kelly's presence in Brittany by 1877

is documented in a rare portrait drawing which is inscribed Al.

O'Kelly Pont-Aven Dec. 19/77. The drawing could be a self-por trait by O'Kelly but it may be of O'Kelly by his compatriot,

Thomas Hovenden: an alternative hypothesis is that it is a por

trait of Hovenden by O'Kelly."

After France, O'Kelly lived variously in the West of Ireland,

Egypt, England, and America and then, in the early years of the

20th century, he returned to Brittany, staying at Pont-Aven

where, like Oakley, some of his portraits of Breton villagers

entered the collection of the Pension Gloanec. By 1905, O'Kelly

was at Concarneau and for the next four years he painted

Breton interiors, harbour scenes, and landscapes. Some of these

he sent to the Paris Salon: in 1908, La Sortie and Devant le Feu

and, in 1909, Ave Maria, Procession Religieuse en Bretagne and

L'auberge, Bretagne. Like Oakley (in the years 1904 and 1905),

(Overleaf). 1. Arthur OAKLEY: Young girl of Pont-Aven. 1906. Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm. Signed and dated Oakley '06 (Private Collection, Brittany). Although signed 'Oakley', this study of a

Breton girl may be by O'Kelly. In contrast to the 'Dutch' tonality of some of O'Kelly's interiors of the early-20th century, the picture has an unusual simplicity and sweetness of colouring in the

touches of pink and blue in the child's doll-like face and bonnet.

8 1

IRIshE ARTS REVIEW



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DOUBLE IDENTITY: ALOYSIUS O'KELLY AND ARTHUR OAKLEY

O'Kelly's address in the Salon catalogue was

given as the Hotel de France, Concarneau

and, again like Oakley, none of O'Kelly's

paintings was for sale.'2 Even more striking

is the similarity between the catalogue

descriptions of the two artists. In 1905, for

example, Oakley lists himself as Oakley,

Arthur, ne a New York (Etats Unis dAmerique)

- eleve de M.M.Bonnat, Bouguereau et

Gabriel Ferrier. - A Concameau, (Finistere),

Hotel de France while, in 1908, O'Kelly is

O'Kelly, Aloysius, ne a New York, (Etats-Unis

d'Amerique) el&ve de M.M.Bonnat, et Gabriel

Ferrier. - A Concameau, (Finistere), H6tel de

France. "

It seems to me that O'Kelly and Oakley

are one and the same and that to the many

confusions already surrounding Aloysius O'Kelly - his age, his place of birth, his date

of death, his travels, his training, the vari

eties of styles in which he worked, his signa

ture - must now be added his actual name,

even his nationality. In actual fact, he is

recorded, in an unpublished biography of the New Zealand artist, Sydney L

Thompson, who also worked at Concameau,

as having referred to himself on occasion as

'Oakelly'.'4 The identity of the two artists as one and

the same goes some way to explaining sev

eral of the mysteries surrounding O'Kelly.

In the Salon catalogues of 1908-09, O'Kelly

lists his teachers as Bonnat and Ferrier

while in the American Art Annual for the

years 1907-10, he gives Gerome, Bouguereau,

and Bonnat." Oakley, on the other hand,

states (in the Salon catalogue, 1904-05)

that his masters were Bonnat, Bouguereau,

and Ferrier. This suggests that O'Kelly had

studied with Gerome and Bonnat in the

1870s but had later, in 1901-03, been a

pupil of Bouguereau and Ferrier at the

Academie Julian. It also explains why

O'Kelly had not, as previously thought,

studied at the Academie Julian where many

of the artists who later moved to Brittany

had trained. He did study there, but as an

artist in his fifties calling himself Oakley

and as an American. In this latter respect

2. Arthur OAKLEY and Aloysius O'KELLY: Their

Handwriting Compared. The postcard (above) was sent by

Oakley to Mademoiselle Delobbe about 1906; the letter

(below) was written by O'Kelly in 1912. The writing in the

two documents is remarkably similar.

CARTE POSTALE

\c~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

INAC6g1TH

/7L/

4- s Y~~~~ttI

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xwA~~~~~~~~~A

83

IRISH ARTS REVIEW




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O'Kelly/Oakley was not misrepresenting himself as he had been admitted an American citizen on 1 May 1901.16

The most compelling identification between O'Kelly and Oakley, however, is their handwriting. The confident message written by Oakley, in his postcard to Mlle Delobbe (Fig 2), has

close similarities with O'Kelly's early signatures and with the writing in his letters written to William Macbeth in New York, 1909-1912 (Fig. 2).'

Valuable new biographical details may now be proposed for

O'Kelly: that he first adopted the name

Oakley as early as 1893; that, after a few

years in America c.1895-1901, he returned to France in c. 1901; that, around the age of

fifty, he became an art student in Paris for

the second time, studying in the Academie

Julian, 1901-1903, and lodging in the same street where he had lived thirty years earlier;

that in the atelier of Bouguereau and Ferrier,

he was a fellow-pupil of his compatriate, W J Leech, of Sydney Thompson, and of the

Austrian Carl Moser; that he may have

influenced the plans of these younger artists to visit Brittany and may have lived between

Pont-Aven and Concarneau from c.1903 1909, longer than is previously thought (which would confirm Homan Potterton's speculation that some of the time that

O'Kelly was believed to be in America, he

was in France);`8 and that between 1904 and

1909, he signed some of his pictures O'Kelly

and some Oakley; and that he exhibited at

the Paris Salon in 1904-05 as well as in

1908-09 (under the pseudonym of 'Oakley'). He may have known the French artist,

Alfred Delobbe.'9 But why did O'Kelly, who was born in

Dublin, state (in the Salon catalogues and in

registering at the Academie Julian) that he

was an American and born in New York?

Had he forgotten his Irish heritage? There is

no reason why he should have wished to lose

his historic Irish name. Perhaps what started

out as a punning joke amongst friends led

him to adopt a pseudonym. Perhaps, after

spending too much time in the bazaars of

Cairo or the mountains of Morocco, O'Kelly had become forgetful. Or perhaps the politi cal unrest which he had witnessed in Ireland in his younger days, the fact that his brother

James O'Kelly had been a member of the

IRB,20and later had become friends with

Charles Stuart Pamell,21 made him (Aloysius) wish to put his Irish background behind him

for a while, and take on another 'American'

identity. The long-awaited Aloysius O'Kelly retrospective exhi bition at the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art this year,

selected by Niamh O'Sullivan, will help to provide answers to some of these questions.22

JULIAN CAMPBELL is a tutor in the Crawford College of Art, Cork and is the author of many books and catalogues on Irish artists in Brittany.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I am very grateful to the following people in my research for this article: Mme Catherine Puget, Conservateur of the Musee at Pont-Aven; Dr David Sellin: Dr Catherine Fehrer; and Dr Margarita Cappock.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW




Saloni de i9o-. - La Bounie .4e Ar oiNak?

4. Arthur OAKLEY: La Bonne Aventure. 1905. Postcard, 8.5 x 13.5 cm. (Archives, Musee de Pont-Aven). The hearth appeared in many paintings of Breton interiors from the 1860s onwards. O'Kelly had represented a hearth in The Evening Pipe, c. 1877, and this painting by 'Oakley' has affinities with O'Kelly's Before the Fire, 1908. The seated woman on the left is telling the five younger girls their fortunes. Such was the popularity of Breton subjects in the early-20th century that some artists made postcards of their paintings.

Oakley's picture was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1905, but its present whereabouts is not known.

1 RA, 1889, no 1003; RHA, 1893, no 169, ?20;

Liverpool Autumn Exhibition (1894), no 919, ?15-15. The painting, included amongst sev

eral Cairo pictures, was no doubt also an

Egyptian subject. See O'Kelly's oil painting Game of Draughts, 1889, no 31 in The Irish

Impressionists (1984). 2 Listed in J Johnson, Works exhibited at the Royal

Society of British Artists, 1824-1893 (London

1975). The watercolour was priced at ?20

which, as an added coincidence, was the same

price as O'Kelly's RHA picture. 3 I am very grateful to Dr D Sellin in Washington

for sending me this information. Dr Sellin, the

authority on the subject of American artists in

Brittany, had found little information on

Oakley. 4 Registers of Acad?mie Julian, Archives

Nationales de France.

5 C Fehrer, The Julian Academy Paris 1868-1939

(New York 1989). 6 Registers of Acad?mie Julian. 7 Catalogues of Paris Salon, Soci?t? des Artistes

Fran?ais, 1904-05. 8 Mlle Delobbe may have been the daughter of

the French academic painter, Alfred Delobbe, who was a regular visitor to Brittany.

9 Information supplied by Mme Catherine

Puget, conservateur of Mus?e de Pont-Aven.

10 Registers of Ecole des Beaux Arts (Gerome's

atelier), Archives National de France.

11 The exact identity of this ink drawing

(Kennedy Galleries, New York) has not yet been established. It was listed in an exhibition

of Hovenden's work (Thomas Hovenden, 1840

1895, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, 1995, no 12) as a drawing of O'Kelly by

Hovenden. David Sellin speculates that it may be a portrait of Hovenden by O'Kelly (Letter to the author, 15 May 1998). A third possibil ity is that it is a self-portrait, perhaps given to

Hovenden by O'Kelly at Pont-Aven.

12 Catalogues of Paris Salon, 1908-09. Both

Oakley's three Salon entries, 1904-05, and

O'Kelly's four entries, 1908-09, are marked

with an asterix. This indicates that all the pic tures belonged to the artist, i.e. were not for

sale.

13 Catalogues of Paris Salon, 1904-05 and 1908

09.

14 Cited by D Ferran in William ]ohn Leech. An

Irish Painter Abroad, National Gallery of

Ireland (1996), p. 29, 32; p. 303, note 4L My

curiosity as to the uncertainty over the names

O'Kelly and Oakley was aroused in 1993 when

Mme Catherine Puget showed me photographs

of Breton portraits and figures by O'Kelly. In

subsequent correspondence, Mme Puget informed me that the present painting, Young

Girl of Pont-Aven was signed 'Oakley' and not

O'Kelly. 15 H Potterton, 'Aloysius O'Kelly in America,'

Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol 12 (1996), p. 91.

16 Potterton (as note 15), p. 92.

17 Letters from O'Kelly to W Macbeth, Archives

of American Art.

18 Potterton (as note 15), pp. 91-95.

19 Fran?ois Alfred Delobbe (1835-1915) was in

the Pont-Aven and Concarneau region in

1904-05, exactly the same time as O'Kelly or

Oakley. 20 N O'Sullivan, 'Through Irish Eyes, the work of

Aloysius O'Kelly in the Illustrated London

News, History Ireland, vol 3, no 3 (Autumn

1995), p. 10-16.

21 See M Cappock, 'Aloysius O'Kelly and The

Illustrated London News*, Irish Arts Review

Yearbook (1996). 22 N O'Sullivan, Re-Orientations. Aloysius

O'Kelly: Painting, Politics and Popular Culture,

Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art

(Dublin 1999).

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW



double identity aloysius o'kelly and arthur oakley

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