Fiddle player Denis, 97, impresses at Cork's Crawford Art Gallery

A family event in the Long Room at the Crawford Art Gallery involving a lively session of fiddle-playing in front of the painting The Fiddler drew a crowd of curious tourists on Wednesday.

The fiddle player was 97-year-old Denis O’Callaghan, brother of the late artist, Diarmuid Ó Ceallacháin, described by Adams’ Art Dealers in Dublin as "Cork’s finest 20th century painter".

Denis, a retired civil servant who was Charles Haughey’s private secretary in the mid-1960s when he was agriculture minister, travelled from Dublin for the event, along with family members.

Denis was the model for his brother’s painting of a red-haired boy playing the fiddle on Lavitt’s Quay with St Patrick’s Bridge beyond it. 

Denis never had red hair but Diarmuid used artistic licence to portray this young fellow who looks like a bit of a scamp. 

The painting is part of an exhibition, Site of Change, which draws together images from across the centuries recalling and celebrating the Crawford Art Gallery from 1724 to the present.

Proud to celebrate Diarmuid’s appealing painting, Denis never painted himself. 

His mother, whenever she had a few shillings to spare, sent him to violin classes from the age of seven. 

He has been playing on and off since. 

But he didn’t embark on an artistic career, unlike Diarmuid (who also taught painting at the Crawford School of Art). 

It seems Denis was the sensible one, joining the civil service in Dublin at the age of 17, climbing the ladder until retirement. 

Denis is the youngest and only surviving member of the five O’Callaghan brothers.

A widower, Denis lives in a nursing home in Dublin. 

He is very proud of Diarmuid, who was born near Drimoleague in 1915. 

“Diarmuid went to the North Monastery secondary school with Jack Lynch," he said. 

“He became a draper’s assistant in John Buckley’s on Washington Street. 

“The writer Daniel Corkery latched onto Diarmuid and thought he had great talent. 

“He talked my mother into getting him away from the job and going full-time as an artist.”

It was a good move. Diarmuid, having attended evening classes at the Crawford, enrolled as a day student in 1937. 

A year later, he won the prestigious Taylor Scholarship at the Royal Dublin Society, encouraged to apply for it by his art teacher, Mary O’Neill (whose self portrait hangs below The Fiddler in the exhibition). 

Diarmuid was then in a position to study at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin where his teachers were leading artists Sean Keating and Maurice MacGonigal. Diarmuid went on to win the Taylor Prize in 1939.