Cork city has been celebrating the centenary of one of its favourite sons, Seamus Murphy, artist, stone-carver and renowned story teller. Acclaimed as one of the foremost stone carvers and sculptors of his time, he prospered over four decades to become a master of his trade.

Born in Mallow in 1907 he left school at 15 years of age to work as an apprentice stone carver at John O’Connell’s marble works in Blackpool, Cork. In 1931 he received a scholarship which enabled him to go to London and then to Paris, where he was a student of the Irish American sculptor Andrew O’Connor. After returning to Ireland, he worked in O’Connor’s stone yard and in 1934 opened his own studio at Blackpool.

Now in popular demand, his early commissions are a record of the people who shaped modern Ireland. In 1944 he was elected Associate of the RHA.

The same year he married Maighread Higgins, daughter of cork sculptor Joseph Higgins. A year later he designed Blackpool church and in 1947 carved the Apostles and St Brigit for a church in San Francisco.

In 1964 he became professor of sculpture at the RHA and in 1969 he was awarded an Hon LLD by the National University of Ireland. As an artist in a country recovering from the political strife of civil war, most of Seamus Murphy’s commissions from the state were art which commemorated political figures.

In the Cork city hall foyer, a bronze plaque by Seamus honours John F. Kennedy and a bust remembers Jack Lynch, former Taoiseach and Cork’s sporting hero.

Inside Aras a Uachtarain there are bronze busts of former presidents from Douglas Hyde, Sean T O Kelly, Eamon De Valera, Erskine Childers to Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.

Seamus was a protógé of Daniel Corkery, the novelist and story teller who started him off on his career. He enjoyed a fond friendship with Frank O’Connor and composer Sean Ó Riada, all of whom he sculpted.

Some of his works can be seen in the Leinster area, such as St Patrick’s in Maynooth, Francis Ledwidge in Slane, Countess Markievicz and O’Donovan Rossa in St Stephen’s Green, Michael Collins in Hugh Lane Gallery and Tailor and Ansty in Farmleigh House.

In 1966 his memoir ‘Stone Mad’ was published and is considered to be an Irish classic. Recently his daughter Beibhinn in an interview said: “My father was a gentleman and a great man about the house. Seamus was very particular about the housekeeping. He wouldn’t do it all himself, but he saw to it that it was done. He would go to the sales for new sheets and all that sort of thing, like the captain of a ship.”

On 2nd of October 1975 Seamus Murphy died suddenly in his home off the Wellington Road, Montenotte and is buried at Rathcooney graveyard Co Cork.

Above: Seamus Murphy working on the ‘Virgin of the Twilight’ for Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork.
Left: ‘Daydream’ (1931), about 18 inches high, carved in marble by Seamus Murphy.