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Patrick O'Hara (artist)

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Patrick O'Hara
Patrick O'Hara in 2010
Patrick O'Hara with one of his sculptures in 2010
Born1936 (1936) (age 89)
Windsor, England
EducationHaileybury and Imperial Service College
University of Reading
Malvern School of Art
Known forSculpture
Ceramic art
Porcelain
Watercolor
Wildlife conservation
ElectedLinnean Society of London
Patron(s)Jean Flagler Matthews
Taoiseach Charles Haughey
Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Websitewww.oharasculpture.com

Patrick O'Hara (born 1936) is an English artist and sculptor. His main subjects are wildflowers and butterflies, focusing in particular on endangered species. He is known for his highly delicate work in porcelain, portraying wildflower and insects in life-size, with incredible attention to detail and accuracy.

Early life and education

[edit]

Patrick O'Hara was born in Windsor, England.,[1] in 1936,[2] having ancestral roots in County Mayo, Ireland.[3] His father was a Latin and geography teacher,[4] and his great uncle Alfred Scorer was an eminent entomologist, and O'Hara showed a keen interest in natural history from an early age.[2] He was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College,[4] and studied botany, zoology and geology at University of Reading.[5][4]

Early career

[edit]

Before becoming successful as an artist, O'Hara worked as an agricultural advisor for Spillers and Unilever. After taking evening classes in ceramics at Malvern School of Art, he began selling Earthenware[2] models of traction engines, fairground organs and veteran cars[6] at London department stores such as Harrods and Liberty's, with prices between £25 and £40.[7] O'Hara was then commissioned by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars for display in their offices in Basingstoke.[5] After these initial successes, O'Hara, being a trained botanist, started creating porcelain models of wild flowers and butterflies.[3][8]

At school, he was thrown out of pottery class.[5]

Exhibitions

[edit]
Porcelain sculpture by Patrick O'Hara showing honeysuckle, a tiger beetle and a Purple Emperor butterfly. Exhibited at O'Hara's first exhibition in Cartier in New York in 1972. Height 19 cm.

Just two years after O'Hara started creating ceramic art, he had his first solo exhibition in Cartier in New York's Fifth Avenue in December 1972, with prices ranging between $3,000 and $16,000.[9] The exhibition took place in a darkened room, with his sculptures lit up by hidden lighting, showcasing the translucent nature of porcelain.[10] His exhibits of wild flowers and insects in porcelain were described as exceptionally fine, accurate and scientifically flawless, with even the insects' antennae hand-modelled in porcelain.[9] They included models of gorse, lady orchid, brown toadstool, and Queen of Spain fritillary butterfly. His exhibition was well-received and compared to the famous Glass Flowers of the Ware Collection, as well as to Fabergé.[9] The exhibition was followed by another at Cartier's branch in Beverly Hills, California in 1973.[11]

O'Hara's first exhibition in London took place in the Moorland Gallery in October 1973,[5] and within one hour of the opening, six sculptures had been sold for more than £6,000.[12] The exhibition featured nineteen original sculptures in total, each one being made in pure porcelain, with no wire or plastic used,[12][13] sometimes only one thirtieth of an inch thick.[5][14] One stand for a 20th sculpture remained empty, as the wild gladioli that O'Hara had intended to model, had all been picked.[12][15] He left the stand empty as an appeal to the public not to pick rare flowers.[16] The largest sculpture at the exhibition featured a peony that grows wild only on Steep Holm island, and many of the exhibits are mounted on polished onyx[5][14] or rosewood bases.[15] Five percent of the sale of a sculpture of sea holly and Glanville fritillary were donated to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust.[16] His work was described at the time as "probably the most delicate porcelain in the West",[5] and O'Hara was called one of the world's great wildlife artists.[13] Arthur Negus praised his work calling it "superb" and "antiques of the future".[14]

In 1975, O'Hara undertook a trip down the Mississippi to study the wildflowers growing there, and to make many notes and drawings, including creating colour charts. These, he brought back to his studio in England to create porcelain sculptures depicting the flowers he had studied.[17] His route followed that of renowned American bird artist Audubon.[10] Many of the flowers he studied are rare or endangered species, including Mead's milkweed,[4] as O'Hara was hoping to draw attention to the need for conservation.[8] The sculptures went on show at two exhibitions in America in 1975, at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, which at the time was the largest indoor flower show in the world,[17] and at an exhibition at Barclays bank in Chicago.[18]

After moving to Cork Harbour, Ireland,[19] O'Hara exhibited at the Wexford Festival in 1976 with sculptures showing wild flowers and butterflies that can be found on the Irish coast.[20] They were regarded as real collector's items but that may appeal only to a certain taste.[21]

Further exhibitions followed, including at the Royal Horticultural Society in London in 1979.,[22] where O'Hara was the first ever artist showing artwork other than paintings or drawings.[1][23] In April 1980, he exhibited at Bank of Ireland in Dublin,[24][25] followed by an exhibition in Zürich in October that same year,[24] featuring porcelain sculptures of rare and protected Alpine flowers.[26][27] The proceeds of one of the sculptures at his Swiss exhibition, featuring a marsh orchid,[28] were donated to the World Wide Fund for Nature.[10]

Porcelain Sculpture by Patrick O'Hara showing Prunis avium. Exhibited at the United Nations in Geneva in 1984 (International Year for Plant Conservation). Height 30 cm.

In 1984, O'Hara was the first living artist to exhibit at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.[29][30] This was followed by an exhibition at the United Nations in Geneva[31] to draw attention to the global need for plant conservation.[32] To underline his approach to conservation, O'Hara never picks a flower to model it, but studies them in the wild.[29]

At an exhibition in Pennsylvania in 1988, O'Hara's botanical sculptures were priced up to $26,000.,[33] and described as "so lifelike you can almost smell their fragrance".[33]

Expo '90 in Osaka, Japan, included several O'Hara sculptures of medicinal plants,[34][35] and one of his sculptures is housed in The Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints in Tokyo,[36] while another is in the Embassy of Ireland, Tokyo.[35]

In 1994, an exhibition at Wakehurst Place followed, organised by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.[37]

In June 2002, thirty years after his first exhibition in New York, O'Hara exhibited porcelain sculptures, pâte-sur-pâte plaques and watercolour paintings at the National Botanic Gardens (Ireland).[38][39][40] Sculptures in this exhibition were priced between €6,000 and €12,000.[41]

2004 saw O'Hara holding an exhibition at Fota House, Co. Cork showing twenty four different porcelain sculptures, pâte-sur-pâte plaques and watercolours, depicting flora and fauna from his travels to the US, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman.[35][42]

In 2008, O'Hara had two exhibitions in Carlifornia, one at the American Museum of Ceramic Art and one at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, featuring the first ten of a series of watercolour paintings he was commissioned to do by the botanic garden.[43] The aim of this commission is to highlight rare endemic species and support their conservation.[44] The next exhibition at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden followed in 2009, by which time O'Hara had painted twenty watercolours of Californian wildflowers.[45]

By 2011, O'Hara had completed all thirty watercolour paintings for this series, which were exhibited alongside some sculptures in Boole Library Gallery of University College Cork, Ireland, and which he hoped would inspire more students to study botany.[46][47] He made prints of the 30 watercolour paintings, and donated one of each to the Irish Heritage Trust, which houses them at Fota House in Cork harbour.[46]

Notable commissions and collections

[edit]
Earthenware model of 1913 Morgan 3 wheel cyclocar by Patrick O'Hara. Height 7.5 cm.

One of O'Hara's first commissions was by Lord Stokes to model British Leyland veteran cars in Earthenware for display in their offices in Basingstoke in 1973,[5] including models of the first Morris, Austin and Jaguar cars[3]

In 1977, O'Hara was commissioned to create a series of porcelain sculptures for Hutschenreuther, a porcelain factory in Bavaria,[1][10] who turned them into limited editions, using almost one hundred moulds for one sculpture.[48]

In 1979, O'Hara was commissioned to make a sculpture of the rare Badgeworth buttercup, which was then presented to the Museum of Gloucester.[23]

Porcelain sculpture by artist Patrick O'Hara showing the Celtic vase that was given to the President of India by Taoiseach Charles Haughey in 1982. Height 7.5 cm.

In 1982, O'Hara was commissioned by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey to make decorated Celtic vases to present to the President of India and to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg on their state visits.[36][49] The vases show paintings of mythological creatures inspired by the Book of Kells, alongside Irish wildflowers and butterflies.[50]

Several of O'Hara's sculptures are housed in the Flagler Museum in Florida, having been commissioned by Jean Flagler Matthews.[33]

In 1989, SmithKline Beecham and Sumitomo Chemical jointly commissioned O'Hara to sculpt a series of medicinal plants, including the flowers of liquorice, ginger and ephedra, for display at Expo '90.[34][38] As ginger flowers quite rarely and only for a brief time, he had to fly to Hong Kong at short notice to study the flower. To study ephedra in flower, he travelled to the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.[51]

This was followed by a commission by the combined British and American Pharmaceutical Societies to present as a gift to the Japanese Pharmaceutical Society.[52]

In 1990, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia commissioned a series of sculptures of rare American flowers as a permanent collection in their premises.[53][54]

Other notable people in possession of O'Hara's works of art include President of France François Mitterrand, the Sultan of Oman, and Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl.[53]

Porcelain sculpture by Patrick O'Hara showing Spring Gentian in a Celtic vase. Given to Lady Margaret Thatcher by Taoiseach Charles Haughey at the EC summit in Dublin in 1990. Diameter 10 cm.

In 1990, at a meeting of the Council of the European Union hosted in Dublin Castle, each European Head of state was presented with a sculpted endangered life-size flower encased within a cage with Celtic decorations, which O'Hara calls his 'Secret Gardens'.[3][51] Commissioned by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey to highlight the EU Habitats Directive, each flower was chosen appropriately for the recipient. For example, François Mitterrand received a sculpture of Primula allionii, which grows in an area of the French Alps where he liked to holiday. Margaret Thatcher received the blue Spring Gentian.[3] Each of the Celtic vases bears the Irish and EU flags, as well as the national flag of the recipient's country.[52]

To make these 'Secret Garden' vases, O'Hara first creates the vase as a hollow sphere, and then cuts the openings. The flower is then inserted, assembled and painted through the openings in the vase.[51]

In 1993, Jefferson Smurfit Corp. commissioned a sculpture of the rare Bartram's Ixia, which grows in their Florida forests[3] and only flowers briefly at dawn.[51] With O'Hara's help, the company set up a conservation programme for the plant.[29] The sculpture, which features fourteen different species,[29] is now on display at the K Club in County Kildare, Ireland.[29]

In 2008, O'Hara was commissioned to paint a series of watercolours of the wildflowers of California by Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.[55] Unlike Victorian botanical paintings, his watercolours depict flowers in association with other plants and with the insects and birds that live off them, composing a particular natural habitat.[44][55]

One of O'Hara's sculptures is in the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History[30][35], while one of this Pâte-sur-pâte plaques is in the collection of the Ulster Museum.[41]

By the time O'Hara retired from artwork, he had made nearly six hundred sculptures portraying over two thousand different species of plants and butterflies,[32] as well as about one hundred watercolour paintings.[45]

Public appearances

[edit]

In November 1973, O'Hara appeared on the Roundabout newsreel issue 138, produced by British Movietone News.[56]

In 1974, the BBC made a documentary film about O'Hara's work as part of the 'Look, Stranger' series of programmes, which showed him making a porcelain sculpture of wildflowers over a three-week period.[4]

David Seymour on BBC's The Arts Programme in 1975 described O'Hara as the "world's leading sculptor of wild flowers".[41]

Recognition

[edit]

O'Hara was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1992.[43]

Carl C. Dauterman, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, described O'Hara's work as "probably the most delicate porcelain ever produced in the West".[41]

Naturalist Roger Tory Peterson commented on O'Hara's artwork "I am astounded to see such great botanical and entomological accuracy and detail in porcelain. Patrick O'Hara is not only a perceptive botanist - but, also, an artist of extraordinary skill".[14]

John Patrick Cushion, Senior Research Assistant at Victoria and Albert Museum and lecturer at Morley College, mentions O'Hara in his book Animals in Pottery and Porcelain when he says "there was nothing that could not be made in porcelain, and modern artists are proving that he was right; none more so than Patrick O'Hara [...] who combines the beauty of wild flowers with that of butterflies and insects. [...] the delicate veins on the wings being applied in slip - similar to the famous pâte-sur-pâte of Marc Louis Solon".[57]

Technique

[edit]

O'Hara's work has been described as a synthesis of art and science.[58] Each of his sculptures is a unique piece, and could take O'Hara up to three months to complete. The mineral clay he uses is a translucent hard-paste porcelain, which he gets from Stoke-on-Trent, and is based on a Japanese formula.[2] He would then age the clay for three or four years by keeping it in damp darkness.[29]

Before O'Hara starts modelling the flowers and insects in clay, he makes detailed field drawings studying the species in the wild, travelling through the US, Europe, Asia and Africa.[30] His drawings are rather like engineers' drawings, measuring the distance between leaves, the length of leaves, and how many petals there are.[59] He also matches the plant's colours to a colour palette of fired samples of glazes, as the colour glazes for porcelain look very different before and after firing.[11]

To model the plants and insects in clay, he uses dental instruments, scalpels and tweezers.[30] As metal tools can leave traces, he uses ceramic blades to make sure the porcelain stays pure.[29][51] Some parts of his sculptures, such as butterflies' wings or antennae, are less than 1 mm thin,[2] and such delicate works in porcelain had not previously been achieved in the Western world.[14] The entire sculpture is then assembled using only water and clay, and fired in one piece, at 1,000°C.[11][29]

Because the porcelain clay softens during the second firing process at 1,283°C,[29] every single part of the sculpture down to the thin insect antenna has to be propped up with pre-fired clay rods and ceramic wool.[30] Furthermore, a 12.5% shrinkage during firing has to be taken into account.[2]

After this stage, the supports are removed, and the sculpture is painted with glazes. He has a colour palette of around 800 different colour glazes, including matte and glossy shades,[2] and more than seventy shades of green.[13] The sculpture is then fired another five to six times in the kiln, at different temperatures for the different glazes,[30] each firing taking up to 48 hours.[11]

None of his sculptures contain any wire to support them, though most are mounted on bases of onyx, marble or wood.[2][9]

To transport or ship a finished sculpture, O'Hara places them inside a specially designed wooden box of the kind used for transporting microscopes,[30] with padding only on the outside of the box.[29]

Personal life

[edit]

Patrick O'Hara was married to Anna,[4] an art teacher and landscape painter.[1][8] They had two children, Rachel and Simon.[1][4] Anna died in 2013.[60] O'Hara was remarried in 2019, to Daniela.[61]

Publications

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  • O'Hara, D. P. (1996, August 27–30). Botanical Sculpture: A Life Saving Alternative? [Paper presentation]. Linnean Society Annual Regional Conference: Systematics and Biological Collections, Belfast, UK.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Fox, Maureen (21 February 1979). "From Chickens to China!". Cork Examiner. p. 8.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Robertshaw, Ursula (September 1973). "Rare flowers in porcelain". The Illustrated London News. Vol. 261. pp. 87–89.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Akeroyd, John (January 1996). "Nature Revealed in Porcelain". Plant Talk. No. 4. pp. 15–17.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Watson, James (Summer 1976). "Patrick O'Hara's Porcelain Flowers". FLORA Magazine for Gardeners and Flower Arrangers. pp. 30–33.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h "Longdon sculptor is undisputed master of unusual craft". Gloucestershire Echo. 28 September 1973.
  6. ^ Black, Sheila (4 September 1971). "How to Spend It". Financial Times.
  7. ^ Black, Sheila (8 April 1972). "Porcelain Sculpture". Financial Times.
  8. ^ a b c "Porcelain flowers are one of a kind". COMPASS. May 1975.
  9. ^ a b c d Harris, Helen (March 1973). "Art & Antiques Newsletter". Town & Country. Vol. 127. p. 106.
  10. ^ a b c d Schnack, Elisabeth (October 1980). "Patrick O'Haras Secret Garden". du Die Kunstzeitschrift.
  11. ^ a b c d "Patrick O'Hara". Illustrated County Magazine Group Ltd. 1973.
  12. ^ a b c "Longdon sculptor sells £6,000 exhibits in hour". Gloucestershire Echo. 4 October 1973.
  13. ^ a b c "His own man...his own art". International Wildlife. July–August 1973.
  14. ^ a b c d e "Artistry in Porcelain". Cotswold Life. October 1973. pp. 44–45.
  15. ^ a b "Art". New Scientist. Vol. 60. 18 October 1973.
  16. ^ a b "The Island's Own Butterfly - in Porcelain". Southern Evening Echo. 29 October 1973.
  17. ^ a b Dietel, Ruth (4 April 1975). "Hardy spring posies--at $8,000 each". Chicago Daily News. p. 19.
  18. ^ "Garden Club men discuss thorny issue". Chicago Tribune. 9 April 1975. p. 3.
  19. ^ Neeson, Geraldine (18 October 1976). "Enchanting sculptures in porcelain". Cork Examiner.
  20. ^ Byrne, P. F. (27 October 1976). "Great variety in Wexford Festival exhibitions". Evening Herald.
  21. ^ Fallon, Brian (29 October 1976). "Art shows at Wexford". The Irish Times.
  22. ^ "A rare surprise". Gloucestershire and Avon Life. April 1979. p. 61.
  23. ^ a b "Rare buttercup immortalised". Gloucester Citizen. 23 February 1979.
  24. ^ a b Leland, Mary (1 October 1980). "In a cottage in a wood ...". The Irish Times.
  25. ^ Cooke, Harriet (17 April 1980). "Exhibition at Bank of Ireland". The Irish Times.
  26. ^ "The Alps in Ireland". ART about Ireland. June 1980. pp. 5–6.
  27. ^ "Porzellankunst im Silberladen. Patrick O'Hara bei Meister Silber". Zürichsee-Zeitung. 24 October 1980.
  28. ^ "Von Tag zu Tag. Botanische Porzellanskulpturen". Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 22 October 1980. p. 50.
  29. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Kennedy, Tom (September 1997). "Nature as the model". Technology Ireland. pp. 14–16.
  30. ^ a b c d e f g Powers, Jane (25 May 2002). "Frozen landscapes". The Irish Times Magazine. pp. 24–25.
  31. ^ Fox, Maureen (19 September 1984). "It's been a tough two years for Anna". Cork Examiner. p. 8.
  32. ^ a b "Secret Gardens of the Wild". The Irish Garden. October 2001. pp. 30–31.
  33. ^ a b c Kiner, Deb (6 November 1988). "Visiting Irish sculptor takes time to smell flowers, re-create them". Sunday Patriot-News. pp. G20.
  34. ^ a b Earle, Sue (April 1990). "The Great Ginger Hunt". Cathay Pacific Discovery Magazine. pp. 100–103.
  35. ^ a b c d Whitty, Audrey (Winter 2004). "Lessons in Natural History". Irish Arts Review. pp. 106–109.
  36. ^ a b Sullivan, James D. (29 October 1988). "Planting ideas through porcelain". Kennebec Journal.
  37. ^ "In the footsteps of Faberge". Sussex Life. 1994. p. 8.
  38. ^ a b Leland, Mary (18 May 2002). "O'Hara's plant treasures are". Irish Examiner.
  39. ^ Clayton-Lea, Tony (June 2002). "wild and secret gardens". Cara. p. 9.
  40. ^ Thompson, Sylvia (26 May 2002). "Horizons". The Irish Times.
  41. ^ a b c d Armstrong, Joe (31 May 2002). "Leading wildflower sculptor holds Irish show". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 3 April 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  42. ^ "Secret Gardens of the Wild". Aramco World. January 2004. p. 48.
  43. ^ a b Sapp, Erin (12 May 2008). "Renowned Irish artist visits Princeton". NewsTribune. pp. A5 – A6.
  44. ^ a b Monaghan, Nigel (Summer 2011). "From California to Fota Island". Irish Arts Review. pp. 66–67.
  45. ^ a b "Natural artist". wildflower. Vol. 25, no. 3. Spring 2009.
  46. ^ a b Wilkins, Charlie (16 April 2011). "Botany in the picture". Irish Examiner.
  47. ^ McMahon, Leo (28 May 2011). "Wildflowers of California exhibition by Currabinny artist and sculptor at UCC". The Southern Star. p. 16.
  48. ^ Brennan, Peter (Autumn 1980). "Patrick O'Hara". Craft Potters Association. p. 8.
  49. ^ McMahon, Leo (25 November 1989). "Beauty of Cork shown by Currabinny artist". The Southern Star. p. 2.
  50. ^ "Exquisite vase made by Cork couple". The Irish Times. 4 May 1982.
  51. ^ a b c d e Dunlevy, Mairead (November 2002). "Secret Garden - Open Mind". Ireland of the Welcomes. Vol. 51. pp. 16–23.
  52. ^ a b Howard, Gilda (Spring 2004). "Science & Nature". Irish Exteriors Magazine. pp. 16–20.
  53. ^ a b de Moubray, Amicia (17 November 1994). "Blossoms from Clay". Country Life. p. 48.
  54. ^ "A most unusual vision". Cathay Pacific Discovery Magazine. April 1990. pp. 104–105.
  55. ^ a b Telleen-Lawton, Karen (7 June 2008). "Serendipity: Botanical Artist a Natural at Painting Sustainability". Noozhawk. Archived from the original on 30 January 2024. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
  56. ^ "Artist in Porcelain - Patrick O'Hara". British Universities Film & Video Council. Archived from the original on 25 January 2024. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  57. ^ Cushion, John Patrick (1974). Animals in Pottery and Porcelain. USA: Crown Publishers Inc. p. 139. ISBN 0-517-515644.
  58. ^ Nicassio, Susan (April 1981). "Patrick O'Hara's Masterpieces in Porcelain". Ireland of the Welcomes. pp. 14–16.
  59. ^ Kromphardt, Barb (15 May 2008). "From Ireland to California, via Princeton". Bureau County Republican. pp. 4A.
  60. ^ "Sale of Anna OHara paintings raises more than 23000 for two charities". The Southern Star. 3 February 2015. Archived from the original on 25 January 2024. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  61. ^ Green, Very Rev. Susan (May 2019). "Cloyne Union". The Church of Ireland United Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross Diocesan Magazine. p. 31.
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