Rappahannock artist Edmund Kavanagh’s patriotic tribute lands a place of honor in National Museum of Ireland
By James P. Gannon
The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin has honored Rappahannock County’s most famous Irishman, Edmund Kavanagh, by putting on permanent display his “unique tribute” to seven Irish patriotic heroes of the Easter Uprising of 1916.
A master goldsmith and Dublin native, Kavanagh crafted his special gift to the Irish nation as a tribute to the men who led the fight for Irish independence and as a thank-you to his nation for helping him develop his artistic skills in precious metals.
Kavanagh, who lives near Washington, Va., spent untold hours over the past year working on a masterpiece in gold, silver and Ireland’s famous Connamara marble that is a memorial to seven Irish patriots who were executed by the British Army in May 1916 for their role in leading the Easter Uprising of that year–a rebellion that was crushed but ultimately led to Irish independence from Great Britain.
The artwork is built on an oval base of Connemara marble, green as an Irish landscape. In its center, a gold figure of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd stands astride a gold relief map of the heavily Catholic island nation, holding a silver gravestone engraved with the name of Padraic Pearse, leader of uprising. Six more silver gravestones surround the scene, engraved with the names of the other six executed Irish heroes–Sean McDermott, Thomas Clarke, James Connolly, Thomas McDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt and Joseph Plunkett.
Those seven were signers of the “Proclamation of the Republic” issued by leaders of the Easter rebellion, proclaiming independence from Britain in a manner very similar to the colonial American Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. All seven were executed by firing squad by the British Army at Kilmainham Jail in Dublin in May, about a month after the rising.
The rebellion by the forces of the Irish Volunteer and the Irish Citizens Army raged in Dublin’s streets for a week in April 1916 but ultimately was suppressed by the British military amid heavy casualties on both sides.
“I have always wanted to give Ireland back something for unearthing whatever artistic skills I possess and from which I have made a fair living ever since,” explained Kavanagh, who learned his skills in Dublin and later worked in London, New York and finally Rappahannock County since 1997.
He said that for a long time he was unsure what kind of a gift to make, until a few years ago, while on a visit to his native city, “I took a walk through scenes of my childhood.” As a boy, he would sometimes skip school and go to the art museums and the National Museum in Dublin because the buildings were a warm refuge on winter days. He loved walking through galleries of statues and admiring the heroes of Irish history.
“The memorabilia there and the death masks would well up inside me and haunt me,” Kavanagh recalls. “They were just good men–like George Washington–that boiled at the injustice and wanted their country back, nothing else.” That was when the idea of a tribute to the seven signatories of the Proclamation took hold.
Kavanagh said he can’t calculate how much time he put in on the intricate work in gold, silver and marble, other than to say it was “countless hours.” In July he carefully packed the table-top artwork into a suitcase and flew to Dublin to show it to an official of the National Museum of Ireland.
At first, he said, the Museum curator seemed skeptical that anyone would have all the skills necessary to produce such a work, so Kavanagh sent to him a video documenting the step-by-step process of its creation. In August, the Museum accepted the artwork for display in the Museum’s gallery at Collins Barracks in Dublin, with a letter expressing the curator’s thanks for “this unique tribute to the seven signatories of the Proclamation.”
For more on Kavanagh’s life and artwork, and a recent book about him, see our earlier story here.
-- James P. Gannon
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