Tony O’Malley was born in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, in 1913. Self-taught since childhood, art was a deeply imbedded passion he pursued out of pleasure. A clerk at the Munster and Leinster Bank for several periods of his adult life, he first resigned in the 1940s after contracting tuberculosis. His convalescence corresponds to the moment where he began paintings more earnestly and consistently. Even if he retrieved his position at the bank at first, the passion and recognition accumulated led him to dedicate himself to painting full time, and he began exhibiting work in 1951.
Like many British artists of the 20th century concerned with landscape and nature painting, O’Malley holidayed in St Ives, Cornwall. St Ives – rendered famous as a place of artistic pilgrimage by the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Naum Gabo and plenty more –maintained its status as a creative hub well into abstraction (O’Malley travelled back there in 1957, after officially quitting his job at the bank). Eventually – due to a combination of the frustration stemming from the ignorance he felt in his own context and the sense of freedom and inspiration he felt among the artists and natural vistas in Cornwall – he settled in St Ives in 1960. The latter years of the decade following this move saw the artist adopt a sober chromatic palette inspired by or in reaction to the tragic passing of his friend and mentor Peter Lanyon, killed in a glider accident in 1964.
Nevertheless, although integrated into the local artistic community, O’Malley was still very much an independent voice, engaged but not tamed by the rigour and formality of the British abstract painters. O’Malley defended his personal extravagance as follows: ‘Not so much abstract as essence. I could not paint for the sake of the pigment of whatever, but I like abstract form in the painting which instils it with meaning and power. Abstraction does enable you to get under the surface, to get beyond appearance, and to express the mind. But abstraction for its own sake does not interest me’.
The 1970s marked a new change in scenery following O’Malley’s marriage in 1973 to Canadian painter Jane Harris, whom he met in St Ives, with time divided between the Bahamas, Saint Lucia, Lanzarote and the artist’s native Callan. Adapting to these contexts, O’Malley’s work and colours brightened towards warmer and more joyful hues. In 1990, the couple moved back to Ireland, settling in Physicianstown in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, where the artist passed away in 2003.
The first exhibition of O’Malley’s work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art was held in 1992, a further exhibition was held in 2001, and a major retrospective in 2005. He also exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and Taylor Galleries in Dublin, and Coram Gallery in London, and he represented Ireland at the international art exhibition Rosc in 1980. He was elected Saoi (wise one) of Aosdána in 1993 and the following year he received an Honorary Doctorate from Trinity College Dublin. O’Malley has been the subject of various publications through the years: David Whittaker (2005) Tony O’Malley: an Irish Artist in Cornwall; Gemma Tipton (2003) Tony O’Malley 1913–2003; Dorothy Walker (2003), ‘O’Malley, Tony’ in Brian Lalor, ed., The Encyclopaedia of Ireland; John O’Regan (1994), Works 14: Tony O’Malley; Brian Lynch, ed. (2004) Tony O’Malley, 4th ed.
His name continues to inspire to this day, in part thanks to the artist’s residency established by the Royal Hibernian Academy (under the guidance of Jane O’Malley) in 2010. Said residency takes place in the very house O’Malley grew up in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. David Quinn, for example, was among the artists rewarded with this residency.
