Fergus O’Ryan RHA “The Cathedral, Salamanca”

The artist was born in Limerick, studying under Richard Butcher at the Limerick School of Art and also at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. He is known for his paintings of Irish rural landscapes and urban industrial scenes. He spent some of his career as a professional designer and commercial artist, working with McEvoy’s Advertising Services in Dublin, along with designing theatre sets and cinema posters. The artist also worked as an educator at the National College of Art, did several illustrations for Patricia Lynch’s Tales of Irish Enchantment and designed a stamp to mark Irish cultural festival, An Tóstal. O’Ryan exhibited with the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which he became a member in 1960, the Victor Waddington Galleries and the Watercolour Society of Ireland. He was awarded the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal at the Oireachtas Exhibition in 1956, and the Fergus O’Ryan RHA Memorial Award was set up in his honour in 1993.