Michael Collins was a young man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders — artist, Mick O'Dea
Artist Mick O’Dea pictured at the unveiling of his portrait of Michael Collins. Cork’s Imperial Hotel has commemorated the 100-year anniversary of the death of Michael Collins by unveiling a new portrait in his honour. Pictures: Joleen Cronin
Michael Collins was known as The Big Fellow. However, Collins wasn’t big by modern standards: he stood a little under six feet tall. It’s something that the portrait painter Mick O’Dea was conscious of — as well as the strain on Collins the year he died.
“He’d be no match for a Limerick hurler today,” says O’Dea. “The image of him I've taken for the portrait is from approximately 1919. What struck me is that if you look at photographs of him in, say, 1922, particularly around the Treaty debates, and the Treaty negotiations in London in the winter of 1921, he looks unhealthy, puffy. Like a man under pressure. There’s quite a dramatic change within a few years. He was continuously having to move around, sleeping odd hours. He was a young man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
Collins was only 31 when he died. To commemorate the centenary of his death on August 22, the Imperial Hotel in Cork city commissioned O’Dea to paint his portrait. The painting has just been unveiled in the hotel’s lobby, as part of a series of events, including the screening of two documentaries and the dedication of a new 'Michael Collins Suite' in the room in which Collins spent his last two nights before dying in an ambush at Béal na mBláth, about 25 miles west of the city centre. Collins — along with Daniel O’Connell, Charles Dickens and Princess Grace of Monaco — was among the notable guests who stayed at the hotel which opened in 1816.
O'Dea says: “Collins was only seen in a general’s uniform for six weeks. Even then it was only sporadically. For instance at Arthur Griffith’s funeral as well as the time he was shot at Béal na mBláth. Collins was an able administrator, Minister for Finance, a politician, and so the photograph I’ve used for the portrait has him in civilian clothes rather than the heroic image of the general with the revolver on his side, which is used a lot and is the quintessential image of him."
“I'm more aware of his organisational abilities. During the War of Independence, he was the man in the office at headquarters rather than the man on the field. Even in the handing over of Dublin Castle, he was wearing civilian clothes. He didn't pose for many photographs. By and large, Collins was always caught on camera rushing to and from somewhere. Even at Dublin Castle, he didn't pause. He just lashed out of the car, in for the handover, lashed into the car again with his ministers, which would have included Kevin O’Higgins.”
O’Dea’s Imperial Hotel portrait is probably the twelfth time O’Dea has painted Collins. There is a Collins portrait on the premises of the family pub that O’Dea grew up in on O’Connell Street in Ennis, County Clare. O’Dea has a store of stories about his family’s activities during Ireland’s revolutionary years. His father’s two older brothers were volunteers in the IRA’s Mid-Clare Division. Both uncles survived the conflict. Unlike Collins, whose body was brought back from Béal na mBláth to the Imperial Hotel — which Collins used as a military headquarters during the civil war — for examination by a military doctor before being pronounced dead.
“I was talking to a military man from the Irish Army,” says O’Dea. “He made the point that maybe Collins’ inexperience as a military man on the field was responsible for his death. That Collins stood up and started firing. He made himself highly visible. He showed military naivete at the very last moment. His only combat experience was in 1916 at the GPO. What I think about is the incredible loss of such able people that were key in driving the push for independence."
“Collins — had he lived — could have been a brilliant Minister for Finance. Someone like Roger Casement could have been a wonderful Foreign Affairs Minister; Padraig Pearse, a great Minister for Education. Never mind where you would put someone like Arthur Griffith and countless more men and women of enormous ability, but particularly the men who were killed and executed in that short period between 1916 and the end of the civil war in 1923. A haemorrhaging of talent, people who could have made a huge difference to the new State. Maybe it wouldn't have been such a conservative State, but one can only speculate.
"Losing Collins on top of everyone else was such a blow to the new country.”
