BIOGRAPHY

Charles Brady (1926–1997) was a painter born in New York and studied at the Art Students League there. He first visited Ireland in 1956 and settled here permanently in 1959. Brady was best known as a painter of everyday objects in an understated manner, usually on a modest scale. He exhibited extensively in Ireland and the United States and was the subject of a major retrospective at the RHA in 2002.

Brady won the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal at the 1973 Oireachtas Exhibition, the PJ Carroll Award at the Living Art Exhibition 1978, the Landscape Award at the 1975 Oireachtas and the Keating/McLoughlin Medal awarded by the ESB at the 1996 RHA Annual Exhibition.

He was one of the founding members of the Independent Artists and their annual group shows that took place from 1960 onwards. In 1994 Brady was elected as an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and he was also a member of Aosdána.

His work has been exhibited widely in both his native America and Ireland, with solo exhibitions in the Urban and Babcock Galleries in New York; Davis Gallery, Dublin; and Grant Fine Arts, Belfast.

The RHA held a major posthumous retrospective of his work in 2002 and his work is included in the public collections of Bank of Ireland, the Ulster Museum, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, AIB, the Arts Council of Ireland and the Arts Students League, New York.