Samuel McCloy

Samuel McCloy (13 March 1831 – 4 October 1904) was an Irish artist who trained at Belfast School of Design and later at Somerset House. He exhibited widely in group shows across the British Isles and was known for his watercolours, genre paintings, still-life and landscapes. McCloy was also a commercial designer, illustrator, and an educator who was for a time Master at Waterford School of Art.

Early life

Born in Lisburn, County Antrim, McCloy was the youngest of five children, born to Peter McCloy, a painter, and his wife Martha Phelan. McCloy studied at the School of Design in Belfast from 1850 to 1851 whilst serving an apprenticeship in engraving, with J and T Smyth. when he also became a visiting instructor to several other institutions. In the spring of 1865 McCloy married his student, the Waterford artist Ellen Lucy Harris, the fourth daughter of a banker called Richard Harris. The dismembered corpse of McCloy's mother Martha, was recovered from the River Suir in September of the same year. She had been missing since the previous November. Upon his return to Belfast around 1874 he worked freelance designing greetings cards for Marcus Ward & Co., and in creating damask designs for linen manufacturers. He illustrated Sale Barker's Sunny Childhood published by Routledge in 1887, and he was for a time employed by the Illustrated London News.

McCloy showed just once at the Royal Academy of Arts with a work entitled The Haunt of Meditation in 1859. He exhibited infrequently at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1862 and 1882,

Following his relocation to London in 1881, Nottingham Castle Museum's autumn exhibition of 1888, and at Exeter's Eland Art Gallery in 1892. He exhibited with the Royal Scottish Academy in 1882 and with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1887. McCloy was also a member of the Belfast Art Society, an antecedent to the Royal Ulster Academy. He was survived by his wife, Ellen and nine daughters. The Lisburn Museum in his hometown, offered a belated retrospective of his work in 1981 to mark the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth. the National Gallery of Ireland, and in the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum.