T.P. Flanagan

T. P. Flanagan was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. He took up painting in his teens and learned the arts of watercolour painting from the local portraitist and landscape artist Kathleen Bridle (1897-1989).[1] He then attended Belfast College of Art(1949-1953).

After graduation he obtained a post at St. Mary's College of Education where he stayed for 28 years becoming Head of the Art Department.[2] He continued to paint and to exhibit his work for over forty years.

Seamus Heaney, for whom he painted various pieces, described Flanagan as being in tune 'with the notion of an earthly paradise and hence the radiance of the painting is entirely this-worldly ... and always there has been that necessary painterly hedonism'.[2] His work is the subject of a biography by S.B. Kennedy.

He died in Belfast in 2011.

His work has been exhibited widely in one-man and group exhibitions in Ireland and abroad.

• 1961 - solo show was held at CEMA Gallery in Belfast
• Hendriks Gallery, Dublin
• Caldwell Gallery, Belfast during the 1970s and 1980s.
• A major retrospective of his work from 1945 to 1995 was held at the Ulster Museum
• City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin
• 1995 - Museum of Gothenburg Sweden

His work is represented in numerous private collections as well as the public collections of the Ulster Museum, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.[3]

• 1964 - Elected member of the Royal Ulster Academy
• 1976 - recipient of the RUA Gold Medal in 1976
• 1978 to 1982 - President of the RUA
• 1983 - elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy

S.B. Kennedy (2013) T.P. Flanagan: Painter of Light and Landscape (Featuring a foreword by Séamus Heaney), Lund Humphries.