George Walsh (b.1939)
Stained glass
26.7 x 26.7 cm
2021
Methodist Modern Art Collection
MCMAC: 061
Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208
Artist biography
Born: Dublin, 1939
Early life and education
George Walsh served a seven year apprenticeship in stained glass with his father, George Stephen Walsh, in the Clokey Stained Glass Studios in Belfast and in the Conrad Pickel Studio in Wisconsin, USA. Walsh attended classes in drawing at the Belfast School of Art and was taught in stained glass by Edward Murray Marr.
Life and career
Walsh’s practice is steeped in the Arts and Crafts tradition. He believes in the primacy of drawing and encouraged his students to learn perspective and modelling before embarking on stained-glass making in the belief that art and craft are indivisible.
Walsh’s work Preaching, in the Methodist Modern Art Collection, combines Celtic heritage – as seen in the Book of Kells – with the graphic style of Art Nouveau as seen in work by Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke, in whose studio Walsh’s father had worked. Walsh acknowledges his debt to Clarke but also to many artists like the painter George Campbell, who also worked in stained glass.
Walsh is part of the revival of stained-glass making in twentieth century Ireland and he takes his place with notable stained-glass makers like Harry Clarke and Evie Hone of the Glass Tower cooperative founded in 1903.
Walsh has written “Stained glass can transport us back to the Middle Ages. It can give an atmosphere to a space both spiritual and contemplative.”
Commissions and exhibitions
Walsh undertook many ecclesiastical commissions including for: Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Kilcummin, Co. Kerry; Church of the Irish Martyrs, Ballycane, Co. Kildare; Eyeries Church, Beara Peninsula, West Cork; St Camillus, Killucan, Co. Westmeath; Galway Cathedral; St Peters Church, Chantilly, France; Newtown Church, Co. Kildareso, and (with the architects Holly Park Studios) the Church of the Holy Family in Belfast.
He also received commissions for secular buildings including the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and Dublin. Other commissions can be found throughout the mid-western US, Florida and Newfoundland.
His exhibitions include: The Light Fantastic: Irish Stained Glass Art in the Craft Gallery, Craft Council of Ireland, Kilkenny (2007) (an exhibition which also toured the US in 2009); the Greenacres Gallery, Wexford Opera Festival (2012); and One Man Show in Trinity Gallery, Dublin, 2019. He is a regular exhibitor at the Royal Hibernian Academy.
Sources and further reading
Artist’s website: georgewwalsh.wordpress.com/art-work/
David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 2 M to Z. 2 vols, (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 1644. The text is also available on the Art UK website: artuk.org/discover/artists/walsh-george-b-1939 (accessed 30 April 2025)
The Kenny Gallery: thekennygallery.ie/artists/walshgeorge
Corinne Miller, “New Acquisition,” Newsletter, Friends of the Methodist Modern Art Collection, No. 32, Autumn 2024, pp. 14-15
The Trinity Gallery Dublin: trinitygallery.ie/exhibitions/george-walsh-images-in-light/1621