Henry Nelson O'Neil (1817,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

— 1880) was a historical genre painter and minor Victorian writer. He worked primarily with historical and literary subjects, but his best-known paintings dealt with the

Indian Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the for ...

. ''Eastward, Ho!'', dated August 1857 but exhibited the following year, depicts the British troops embarking for India. A second painting, ''Home Again'' (1859), shows the troops returning to England. He also had popular successes with romantic scenes portraying the deaths of

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...

and

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual ...

, depicted as though mentally transported to heaven by their own religious art. In ''The Last Moments of Mozart'' the dying composer listens to singers performing part of his

Requiem A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...

. ''The Last Moments of Raphael'' shows the painter contemplating the unseen figure of Christ in his '' Transfiguration''. O'Neil was a member of

The Clique A clique is a close social group. Clique or The Clique may also refer to: Math and computing * Clique (graph theory) ** Clique problem in computer science Business and brands * Clique (vodka), a Latvian vodka sold in the United States Entertai ...

, a group of artists in the 1840s who, like the later

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Jame ...

, met regularly to discuss and criticize one another's works. The other members of The Clique were

Augustus Egg Augustus Leopold Egg RA (2 May 1816, in London – 26 March 1863, in Algiers) was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych '' Past and Present'' (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class ...

, Alfred Elmore,

Richard Dadd Richard Dadd (1 August 1817 – 7 January 1886) was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalism, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre works, genre scenes, rendered w ...

William Powell Frith William Powell Frith (9 January 1819 – 2 November 1909) was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting ''The Sleep ...

John Phillip John Phillip (19 April 1817–1867) was a Victorian era Scottish painter best known for his portrayals of Spanish life. He started painting these studies after a trip to Spain in 1851. He was nicknamed John 'Spanish' Phillip. Life Born ...

Edward Matthew Ward Edward Matthew Ward, , (14 July 1816 – 15 January 1879) was a British painter who specialised in historical genre. He is best known for his murals in the Palace of Westminster depicting episodes in British history from the English Civil War t ...

. Most of the Clique opposed the Pre-Raphaelites, but O'Neil was the most virulent in his condemnation of the movement, attacking them in both paintings and writings. These included his

futuristic The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currentl ...

fantasy ''Two Thousand Years Hence'' (1867), which portrayed Britain in the year 3867 as a frozen wasteland excavated by an

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

. The archaeologist uncovers evidence of the decline of British culture in the nineteenth century, allowing O'Neil to vent his own distinctly

reactionary In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the '' status quo ante'', the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics abs ...

political views, predicting dire consequences of the

Reform Act 1867 The Representation of the People Act 1867, 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102 (known as the Reform Act 1867 or the Second Reform Act) was a piece of British legislation that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first ...

. In July, 1865, O'Neil accompanied the ''Great Eastern'' on her voyage to lay the cable of the Atlantic telegraph, hoping to find on board a subject suitable for a picture: the unfortunate breaking of the cable, however, prevented the accomplishment of the artist’s intention. During the voyage he edited and illustrated five issues of the shipboard newsletter ''The Atlantic Telegraph'', and on his return to England he published an account of the expedition in ''Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine''. In 1866 he again accompanied the cable expedition, producing five more publications which were printed on board, and later wrote a humorous account of the voyage for the magazine ''London Society''.

Gallery

File:Henry Nelson O'Neil - Eastward Ho! - 1857.jpg, ''Eastward Ho!'' (1857) File:Henry-Nelson-O'Neil Before-Waterloo 1868.jpg, ''Before Waterloo'' (1868) File:Oneillletterwriter.jpg, ''The Letter Writer'' (1860) File:Catherine Aragon Henri VIII by Henry Nelson ONeil.jpg, ''The Trial of Katherine of Aragon'' Image:AlexandraGravesend.jpg, ''The Landing of H.R.H. the Princess Alexandra at Gravesend, March 7, 1863'' (1864;

National Maritime Museum The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the Unite ...

, London)

External links

*
Discussion of ''The Parting Cheer'', by Henry O'Neil

O'Neil's ''Satirical Dialogues'' at Internet Archive

* ttps://books.google.com/books?id=h4WGzpqnfJkC&pg=PP151 O'Neil's entry in ''Representative Men in Literature, Science and Art'' at Google Books
O'Neil's articles on the 1865 and 1866 Atlantic cable expeditions

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oneil, Henry Nelson 1817 births 1880 deaths English people of Russian descent 19th-century English painters English male painters British genre painters 19th-century painters of historical subjects Associates of the Royal Academy 19th-century English male artists