John Brenan, Landscape Painter
(b. c. 1796, d. 1865)
Landscape Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Was born about 1796 at Fethard, County Tipperary. After studying in the Dublin Society's School, which he entered in 1813, he settled in Cork, where he at first worked as a herald-painter, but afterwards practised with success in landscape. He found his subjects in the neighbourhood of Cork and elsewhere in the south of Ireland, and was an exhibitor in the Royal Hibernian Academy at intervals between 1826 and 1864. Several views of Cork, Killarney, etc., by him were in the Cork Exhibition of 1852. A "View of Ahern Castle" belongs to the Earl of Bandon. A woodcut of "Lismore Castle," after a drawing by him is in the "Irish Penny Magazine," 1833; and a "View of Blarney Castle" was reproduced in lithograph. Daniel Maclise received some of his early lessons in drawing from him. Brenan died in 1865. He was father of James Butler Brenan (q.v.), and of John J. Brenan, who studied in London, and was principally employed in painting backgrounds to his brother James B. Brenan's portraits, and is still living in Cork.