Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/496

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died a few months after his birth ; his father became blind, and was consequently reduced in circumstances, and had to retire to a cottage near the Dargle, where many of young Shee's early years were spent. He evinced a taste for drawing, was ad- mitted to the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, and before long was enabled to support himself in Dublin by painting por- traits. In 1788, after his father's death, he removed to London, where he studied with the utmost diligence, Edmund Burke's personal introduction to Sir Joshua Rey- nolds procuring for him admission to the schools of the Royal Academy. His first picture was exhibited in 1789 ; in 1798 he was elected an Associate, and in 1800 a Member of the Academy. His reputation as a fashionable portrait painter soon be- came widely extended. He married, and established himself in a fine mansion. On the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1 830, he was elected President of the Academy, and he was knighted in the same year. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and other honours were showered upon him, to which Catholics in England were little accustomed. Ottley, in his Dictionary ofPainters.ohseTVQS : " It would be a mistake to attribute Sir Martin Shee's success in his profession, and above all the high official position to which he was elected, to his merit as an artist. The latter, at least, may be more truly assigned as a tribute to his literary attainments . . and to his courteous manners, com- bined with certain gifts in diplomacy, which qualified him in an eminent degree to act as the champion [of the Royal Academy]. If he did not achieve anything great as a painter, he was always ready, to use his own words, ' to break a lance with the vandalism of the day.'" He wrote several poetical pieces of minor merit, and two nove', Harry Calverley,a,nd Old Court, in which were embodied many of his early reminiscences of the neighbourhood of Bray. Lord Holland said of his inaugu- ral address as President of the Academy: " I never heard a better speech." " And I," added Lord Grey, " never heard so good a one." Sir Martin was instrumental in procuring the charter for the Royal Hibernian Academy. As might be sup- posed, he was on intimate terms with many of the greatmenof the time- -Grattan and Curran, as well as Englishmen and foreigners of wider fame. A Civil List pension of £200 a year was conferred upon him shortly before his death, which took place at Brighton, 19th August 1850, in his 8 1st year. He was buried in Brighton Cemetery. Two of his paintings, "The 472

Infant Bacchus," and a portrait of Mor- ton, the dramatist, are hung in the National Gallery in London. He had six children, all of whom survived him. '^ "^t

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Sheehy, Nicholas, Rev., t. Catholic clergyman, executed at Clonmel in 1 766, in consequence of his opposition to the Government. He was born at Fethard, in the County of Tipperary, in 1728, was edu- cated in France, and for many years oflSciated as parish priest at Clogheen. He openly denounced the collection of Church rates, and made no secret of his sympathy with the people in their im- poverished and oppressed condition. Early in 1764 he was arrested for alleged com- plicity in Whiteboy offences, was brought up to Dublin, released on bail, tried, and acquitted; but was immediately re-ar- rested on a chai'ge of being concerned in the murder of John Bridges, an in- former. Conscious of his innocence, he neglected measures for his defence ; and although there was no satisfactory evi- dence to inculpate him, and the body of the alleged murdered man was never dis- covered, he was convicted, and hanged, drawn, and quartered, at Clonmel, on 15th March 1 766. His head remained spiked over the porch of the old jail for twenty years. There can be little doubt that he fell a victim to the party animosity of the time. Mr. Froude expresses the belief that Sheehy was guilty of the charges brought against him, and mentions his having been engaged in a plot in the in- terest of the Pretender ; but admits that his trial was informal. "*' 331

Shell, Richard Lalor, author, poli- tician, and orator, was born at Drum- downey, near Waterford, 17th August, 1 79 1 . His father had amassed a consider- able fortune in the Spanish trade, and occupied a fine mansion on the Suir. The lad's early recollections were all connected with the neighbourhood of Waterford. At eleven years of age he was placed in a Catholic school at Kensington, kept by a French emigrant nobleman. There he almost forgot his own language. Thence he passed to Stonyhurst, and in November 1807 he entered trinity College, Dublin. During his college course his father lost all his property through neglect of tech- nicalities in connexion with a limited- liability company, in which he had invested a portion of his fortune, and young Shell was indebted to the gene- rosity of a friend for means to finish his terms, and to his uncle Richard for en- abling him to complete his studies for the Bar, to which he was called in 1814.