The museum Building at Trinity College, Dublin was designed by architects, Deane & Woodward however the stone carvings on doors, windows and capitals were carried out by the brothers John and James O’Shea along with their nephew Edward Whelan from Cork. These stone masons were of considerable talent and the building with its Gothic revival style is impressive even to this day. It seems the brothers were trusted to be creative and given a degree of freedom in how they worked.
“Woodward allowed the brothers considerable flexibility and they carved their designs in situ. It is said that they worked from material gathered from the College Botanic Gardens, in Ballsbridge. The keen-eyed may spot cats, snakes, frogs, squirrels and birds, lurking among shamrock, daffodils, oak, ivy, lilies, and acanthus.”
Patrick Wyse Jackson’s ‘A Victorian Landmark: Trinity College’s Museum Building’ in the Irish Arts Review Yearbook 1995, p.151
Their realism in the stonework is impressive in its detail and the use of depth and negative space is particularly stunning. In places the leaves appear as if curled back to reveal berries behind them. The usual practise was to carve at ground level and have the work inspected for accuracy and skill before being lifted into situ. However, such was skill of the O’Shea’s they were allowed to carve unworked blocks of stone already lifted high into their final position in the building. The brothers achieved some reknown after their work on Trinity College and on Kildare Street Club. This later club was described by George Moore in contemptuous terms,
“The Kildare Street Club is one of the most important institutions in Dublin. … it represents all that is respectable, that is to say, those who are gifted with an oyster-like capacity for understanding this one thing: that they should continue to get fat in the bed in which they were born. This club is a sort of oyster bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course…”
The O’Shea brothers incorporated a rather creative criticism of their own in the Kildare Street Club window piece which presents the club members as monkeys playing billiards. It was clear that these brothers had not only creative ability but also a sense of humour that they freely expressed in their beautiful stone work.
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Another example of their creative skills is to be found in Oxford Museum which was opened in 1860. Henry Acland, a Reader in Anatomy at Christ Church campaigned to have a new museum for both research and teaching purposes. In particular, he wanted to bring together in one place all the extensive collections that Oxford University had accumulated over the years. In the open competition for architects for the new museum, Deane and Woodward, of Dublin won with their neo-Gothic design. Their success was in part due to their earlier success in designing Trinity College Museum in Dublin. The Oxford Museum was heavily influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin who felt that architecture should be shaped by the natural world. This museum has its place in history as within a year of it being completed it was the venue for the famous debate on Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
Each column surrounding the court is made of a different British rock while the capitals and corbels are carved into a range of plants.
These carvings took two years to complete (1858-1860) and James and John O’Shea with their nephew Edward Whelan once again demonstrated their exceptional talent as stonemasons of both high quality and creativity. They used living specimens from the botanic garden to inform their work. The brothers started working on carvings around the outer windows but a shortage of funds and the constant interference of University officials (the Members of Convocation) meant that the project was never completed.
O’Shea was said to be so incensed he carved owls and parrots as a parody of the University Convocation and was immediately sacked. He had been heard shouting from high up on the scaffolding, "Parrhots and Owwls! Parrhots and Owwls! Members of Convocation!" University officials were so angry about this parody that they accused the O’Sheas of "defacing" the building with unauthorised work.
These unfinished carvings are still visible today over the main entrance of the museum. The remaining capitals, which had to be subsequently finished in 1910 by other stonemasons, are easily identifiable as they are so evidently beneath the standard of the work of the O’Shea brothers.
The O'Sheas and Whelan would later work with Woolner and the architect Alfred Waterhouse in the design of the Manchester assize courts.
They produced a series of capitals depicting gruesome forms of punishment in history for this building, an unusual choice for a court building! The original building was demolished following bomb damage in World War Two however some of the brother’s carvings survive in the replacement building.
These enormously talented, and insuppressibly unconventional, mason sculptors, the O'Sheas have certainly left their mark on memorable historical buildings. Twenty years after working at the Oxford Museum James O’Shea, left his family in Manchester to return to Oxford. However, by this time he was homeless, an alcoholic and he would tragically die here. It feels perverse that a talent that had beautified one of the most historic buildings of Oxford would find himself living destitute and die alone on those very same streets.
