Sir Egerton Bushe Coghill
A cousin and later brother-in-law of the author Edith Somerville, Egerton Coghill was born in Castletownshend, Co. Cork. He abandoned a career in engineering to pursue art, studying initially in Dusseldorf and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1883-84 he resided briefly at Barbizon near Fontainebleu, working alongside the now famous Barbizon School of painters, whose manner of en plein air naturalism he emulated. www.whytes.ie From France he went to England, where he became a member of the New English Art Club, and eventually returned to Ireland where he settled in his hometown of Castletownshend. The local West Cork landscape inspired the bulk of his exhibits at the RHA, between the years 1882 and 1919. A retrospective exhibition was held in 1964 at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and a smaller show followed the next year at the Alpine Club in London. www.whytes.ie
