William Percy French

William Percy French was a landscape painter and illustrator born in County Roscommon in 1854. He was home-schooled and his tutor, Reverend James Rowntree said, ‘his outstanding qualities were wit and humour, patience, sympathy, and a gentle kindness. He was highly endowed by nature, possessing a keen power of observation and good artistic talent.’ He studied engineering at Trinity College but claimed that his interests were the banjo, lawn tennis and watercolour painting rather than academia.

After viewing the annual exhibition of the Watercolour Society of Ireland, French begun his artistic career. In 1872, he exhibited with the Watercolour Society of Ireland for the first time. He went on to exhibit at the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Modern Gallery in London. French travelled all around Ireland; his name became a household word in most Irish towns, both as an entertainer and artist.  He later toured America with ‘Humours of Art and Music’.

Shortly after French’s death, the Irish Times wrote, ‘he was a painter of great charm who preferred painting to writing as a means of expression. He was the most industrious of men. He never seemed to rest.’ In 1974, 1979, and 1982, the Oriel Gallery in Dublin held exhibitions of his work, and in 1978 a retrospective of French was held at the Ulster Museum.