William Burke Kirwan Sold at Auction Prices

William Bourke Kirwan (c.1814-c.1852) DUNLUCE

William Bourke Kirwan (c.1814-c.1852) DUNLUCE CASTLE, COUNTY ANTRIM signed lower left watercolour with pen and ink 21 by 30cm., 8.25 by 12in. Born in Dublin, the son of a picture dealer from Co. Fermanagh, William Kirwan studied under Richard Downes Boyer (c.1746-1841), a portrait painter. Kirwan likewise practiced portraiture and exhibited miniatures at the RHA from 1835 to 1846, and with the Northern Irish Union in Belfast in 1843. He also painted cottage interiors and landscapes for various printmakers such as Hodges of Grafton Street, and found work as an anatomical draughtsman and as a picture cleaner. However, in 1852 he was arrested on suspicion of having murdered his wife whilst on an excursion to Ireland's Eye in Howth harbour. The case is widely documented; Kirwan was found guilty, the chief piece of evidence against him being the existence of a mistress with whom he had eight children. He was sentenced to transportation for life to Australia. Some years later he was pardoned and returned to Dublin but, unable to find work, emigrated to America, where he is believed to have died in New York some time after 1852. The National Library of Ireland has a large folio of his work, some of which is reproduced in Claudia Kinmouth's Irish Rural Interiors in Art. See also Strickland, Vol. I, pp. 596-7.