Conor Tallon spoke with assistant Curator from the Crawford Art Gallery about this week's Art Work of the Week...An Strachaire Fir (c.1923) by Joseph Higgins is a remarkable bronze sculpture in the collection. Translated as ‘the strapping man’, Cast in Italy in bronze, the original clay model was made c.1916 when the artist was 30 or 31. A native of Ballincollig, Joseph Higgins (1885-1925) took night classes in our building (then the Crawford School of Art) while working nearby, on French Church Street, at the grocers and tea dealers Newsom & Sons. In 1924, In 1914, Higgins had married fellow artist, Katherine Turnbull, whom he met at art school. While they were to have four surviving children, he would succumb to tuberculosis in 1925, aged just 39. Their daughter, the artist, designer, and teacher Maighréad (1919-2014), would later marry sculptor Séamus Murphy, whom she had met during her own studies in our building. Modelled on his nephew, a bronze cast of Joseph Higgins’ Boy with Boat (1910) is a beloved mainstay of Fitzgerald Park in Cork. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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