Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb was an Irish painter and teacher who followed his father’s trade as a house painter. He studied at the local Technical School but began attending evening classes at the Belfast School of Art, and then earned a scholarship to Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art from 1917-21. Lamb ran a summer painting school and traveled extensively throughout Ireland, painting landscapes and visiting Carraroe on the coast of Galway Bay. Lamb also painted in Brittany, picturing Breton fishermen and peasants. His paintings are exhibited at most Irish public museums.

The motif of The Fisherman appears in several of Lamb’s works. Based on time of origin, most appropriate for the 1928 art competitions is his Fisherman with Pollan (oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm) from 1926. Pollans are salmon-like freshwater fish. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Lamb produced a series of large paintings of fishermen and their light curraghs (or currachs), typical Irish boats. The Curragh Race was one of the first of this series. Curragh races still take place in summer today on the Connemara coast.