Leo Whelan’s IRA GHQ staff, 1921
Published in 20th-century / Contemporary History, Features, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2009), Revolutionary Period 1912-23, Volume 17
Michael Collins (intelligence), Richard Mulcahy (chief-of-staff), Gearóid O’Sullivan (adjutant-general), Eamon Price (organisation), Rory O’Connor (engineering & OC Britain), Eóin O’Duffy (assistant chief-of-staff), Seán Russell (munitions), and Seán McMahon (quartermaster-general). Standing: J. J. O’Connell (training), Emmet Dalton (operational training), Seán Donovan (chemicals), Liam Mellowes (purchases), and Piaras Beaslai (publicity).
On the Saturday following the truce of 11 July 1921, my father, Richard Mulcahy, IRA chief-of-staff, went with my mother Min to the Gresham Hotel in O’Connell Street for afternoon tea. It was his first public appearance, having been on the run for the previous eighteen months. The well-known painter Leo Whelan was sitting close by with a priest friend and a conversation ensued. My mother suggested to Whelan that, now that a truce had been arranged, it might be a good opportunity to paint the members of the IRA’s general headquarters (GHQ) staff, who were now free to appear in public. Whelan was enthusiastic about the idea.
There were thirteen members on the staff during the last six months of the War of Independence. Whelan arranged separate sittings for each over the following months—a challenge during a very hectic period, particularly for Collins and the more active leaders. Having completed each portrait, Whelan painted a composite picture of the thirteen men in late 1922/early 1923.
Nothing was heard of the composite painting until 1945. It was left on the top landing of Whelan’s residence in Eccles Street but, following a roof leak, was transferred to his studio. There it came to the attention of an Irish Independent correspondent, who, in a front-page article on 10 November 1945, described it as ‘a striking picture by this great painter, which is at once a work of exceptional artistic merit and a document of rare historic value’. It was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) the following year and was offered to the Fianna Fáil government, but turned down. It was turned down again by the first inter-party government in 1948. (Whelan’s asking price was £1,500.)
While going through some of my father’s papers in 1962 I came across a brief newspaper reference to the 1946 RHA exhibition. It was clear that this uniquely historical picture had again been forgotten. We decided to discover its whereabouts and, if possible, purchase the painting. Within two days my father and mother were having afternoon tea with the two surviving Whelan sisters in Eccles Street. A few days later I paid a more business-like call and found the painting in ghostly and dusty isolation straddling the upper landing of the old and decaying Georgian building. After much beating around the bush, a price of £1,300 was agreed and the canvas was transferred to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square, where it was cleaned, re-framed, hung and cared for by the curator, James White. It went with White when he was appointed to the National Gallery, and eventually it returned to my own house in Leeson Park.
In 1987 the picture was transferred to McKee Barracks on long-term loan, but because of its historical significance it deserved a wider public. I therefore offered it to Taoiseach Charles Haughey in 1991, but because we couldn’t agree on where it should hang it wasn’t until 1994, when Albert Reynolds was taoiseach, that my renewed offer was accepted. The picture now hangs permanently over the staircase of the west wing of the National Museum, Collins Barracks, on the way into the permanent exhibition Soldiers and Chiefs: the Irish at war. HI
Risteárd Mulcahy is a retired cardiologist.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.