March 10, 2012

 
The original Man-cave   This new painting is of the dungeon cells in Killmainham Gaol in Dublin.  Here the captured rebels of the 1916 Easter Rising were held before many of them were executed.  Their deaths turned Irish public opinion once and for all against the Queen and towards the rebels who had been considered extremists by many of the Irish population. Five years later Ireland had "independence" although on terms that divided the country and led to the bloody two-year Irish Civil war.  In 1936, twenty years after being locked up in Killmainham, Éamon de Valera became president of Ireland.