Stephen O'Driscoll

(Irish, born circa 1825-1895)

A Silhouette Conversation Piece, depicting Father Mathew presenting alms to the King of the Cork Beggars whilst Daniel Callaghan M.P. looks on, Mathew in profile to the right, wearing frock coat, white stock and tall hat, the beggar in the profile to left, wearing long coat and broad-brimmed hat, a crutch under each arm, holding a dog on a lead in his left hand, Callaghan in profile to the left, wearing trousers, coat, high white collar and tall hat, a tasselled cane in his gloved right hand, shown outside the Victoria Hotel, Cork, a street scene with riders and pedestrians behind

Footnotes

Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856) was a Capuchin priest and temperance leader who was famed for his social work in Cork. He spent many years working for the welfare and education of the poor. In 1838, appalled by the effects of the drunkenness and alcoholism he witnessed in the slums, Mathews took a pledge of total abstinence and devoted himself thereafter to the temperance cause. A vigorous campaign took him through Ireland and England and, in 1849, he travelled to the United States, where he visited numerous major cities up and down the East Coast. It was estimated that, by the end of his trip to America, as many as 600,000 people had been recruited to the Teetotal Abstinence Society. Father Mathews died at Queenstown in 1856 and statues of him were subsequently erected on O'Connell Street in Dublin and St Patrick's Street in Cork - the latter only yards away from the location depicted by the artist here.

Daniel Callaghan (circa 1786-1849) first took his seat in Parliament in 1829 and was subsequently returned on several occasions over the next two decades. Early in his career he threw his weight behind the controversial Reform Act, then being hotly debated at Westminster. He also concerned himself intimately with social issues in his native country. At one point, the Whigs put Callaghan forward as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade but, owing to his sympathies with the Anti-Corn Law League, this suggestion was vetoed by Lord Melbourne. He died of cholera at his estate, Lotabeg, in 1849.

Although it is not known whether the present work records an actual meeting between the three protagonists, much of the interest of the silhouette derives from the precision with which O'Driscoll has recorded the physical appearance of Cork in the mid-nineteenth century. We know that the pillared doorway on the far right is the entrance to the Victoria Hotel, then the most prestigious establishment in the city, and which still exists today. Furthermore, each shop bears on its sign-board the name of a real-life proprietor. Henry O'Hara was a merchant who ran a successful haberdashery (the plate-glass windows of which can be seen at centre) on St. Patrick's Street in the 1840s. His son, Henry Michael O'Hara, later emigrated to Australia, where he became a distinguished surgeon.

W.G. Strickland mentions another version of this group, also dated 1843, as being in the possession of the Cork Museum [see W. G. Strickland, Vol. II, p. 188]. O'Driscoll does not appear to have shown at any of the Cork exhibitions but Michael Holland records that he worked as a lithographer in Pembroke Street and also produced caricature portraits, as well as black paper cut-out silhouettes, which he sold in print shops across southern Ireland [see Michael Holland, "Two typical Cork Sketches, by J. McDaniel and Stephen O'Driscoll", JCHAS, Ser. 2, Vol. XIX, pp. 76-7, 1913]. Over the years, O'Driscoll completed portraits of most of the prominent citizens of his native city, as well as street characters and beggarmen. In later years, he was assisted by his daughter Mary O'Driscoll, who studied at the Cork School of Art.