Horgan brothers: the Youghal pioneers who brought photography, film and animation to Ireland

Irish Examiner

4 days ago

The Horgan brothers, the pioneers of photography, film and animation from Youghal, Co Cork, have been called the Irish Lumières, but the story of their life and work might also be entitled 'Tales of the Unexpected'.
Take, for example, the extraordinary photo they took in 1924, which captures a very early example of the cultural repatriation of looted artefacts. It shows a representative of the Chinese government looking at a set of ornate gates at the one-time home of Walter Raleigh, Myrtle Grove in Youghal, just before they were handed back to China.
It says something about its then-occupant Lady Edith Blake, a noted botanical illustrator and writer, that she was willing to return the gates appropriated by her late husband, Henry Arthur Blake, when he was governor of Hong Kong a few decades before.
The gates — 'objects of pride' to the local community — were blown out of the ancient walls of Kam Tin when the region resisted British occupation of the New Territories in 1899. The residents within pelted rotten eggs and chanted 'foreign devils', but their attempts at resistance were quickly quelled.
In what was described as an act of submission, the villagers then removed the gates and carried them to Flagstaff Hill (now the Tai Po district of Hong Kong). There, Blake admired them and, according to one account, arranged to have them transported back to Myrtle Grove where he lived after his retirement until his death in 1918.
They remained in Cork until the Chinese government petitioned to get them back in 1924. Unusually for the time, Lady Blake was open to the request and, in May 1925, their return to Kam Tin was greeted with a ceremonial salute of small guns and firecrackers.
And much publicity. That is how we know of them, but we might have been completely unaware of their short stay in Ireland had it not been for the Horgan brothers.
'Not for the first time, the brothers photographed an important event that might have been lost to history; in this case, a momentous and progressive example of repatriation of colonial artefacts,' says Darina Clancy, author of a mesmerising new book — with contributions from Jim Horgan and Patricia Horgan Whyte — called The Horgan Brothers, The Irish Lumières.
The story had been stitched into the family lore but it took a bit of detective work on Darina Clancy's part to find irrefutable evidence that the photograph was actually taken in Youghal.
Photo: Horgan Family Collection
She found a reference to the location of the gates in an 1973 article by Peter Wesley-Smith, which adds a few interesting details.
He wrote: 'In 1924, when the residents of Kam Tin petitioned for the return of their gates … the assistant superintendent of police (New Territories) recalled their whereabouts. His wife had formerly been maid and companion to Blake's daughters, and she remembered seeing the gates at Myrtle Grove in 1902.'
He also revealed that there had been two sets of gates but both were defective, having, over decades, 'suffered from the back-scratching of itchy Kam Tin pigs'. Blake made a pair of the ones in the best condition and went about sending them to Youghal.
The photograph of an official preparing to have them sent back to China shows how far-flung world events can sometimes find expression locally. But then, it is not unusual to find the global on your own doorstep.
As Darina Clancy puts it: 'During their own lifetime, and using their own community as their canvas, the Horgan brothers captured key moments of national and international historical significance that may otherwise have been forgotten.'
For instance, another photograph captures a visit by 'The Maharaja of Sarawak', Malaysia, to the Blakes at Myrtle Grove, although the image is only partial and the story behind it vague.
James Horgan at work. Photo: Horgan Family Collection
By contrast, there is much to say about the brothers' photo of tea magnate Thomas Lipton's famous steam yacht, named Erin to honour his Irish heritage, when it visited Youghal. The yacht was fitted as a hospital ship during the First World War and the three children, dots in the photo's foreground, would go on to play important roles in the world war that followed it.
Paddy McGrath was torpedoed three times when he joined the merchant navy in the Second World War and, sadly, died at the age of 24. The two girls featured, Nancy and Eileen McGrath, grew up to be nurses and worked in London during the blitz.
It is that level of detail that makes Clancy's book so fascinating. To stay with the war theme, the photograph of the O'Sullivans making rope with flax along the Rope Walk in Youghal stands on its own as an important social history of the town, but there's more to the story.
Larry O'Sullivan, who is helping his parents, would later join the British royal navy. He was a gunner on the HMS Exeter when the Japanese sank her in the Java Sea in 1942.
Local lore has it that Larry jumped from the ship into the shark-infested waters, and shouted, 'Moll Goggin's corner, here we come'. He survived, was picked up by the Japanese and held as a prisoner of war in Nagasaki.
Marietta Horgan sitting in a row boat. Photo: Horgan Family Collection
He endured hellish conditions at the camp and the atomic bomb detonated over the city in 1945 to make it home to that well-known corner of the world.
Between 1890 and 1940, the Horgan brothers, Thomas, James, and Philip, took a staggering array of photographs that casts them, retrospectively, as social historians and news reporters. In their day, however, they were chroniclers and innovators who captured local people at work — and at play.
They took thousands of photos of local people, immortalising the important moments of their lives: births, communions, confirmations, and graduations.
The scope of their surviving portfolio, however, is much greater. It offers us a peephole into an Ireland that is far more various than we might have imagined.
There are images of the jugglers and acrobats who performed at their travelling magic lantern shows; the schooners, ferries and paddle steamers that sailed on the Blackwater; the soldiers who left to fight in the First World War, many never to return; the hunger strikers who did return from Wormwood Scrubs prison and, in 1922, the bombing of Youghal quays by the IRA during the Civil War.
Darina Clancy writes: 'What is very special in all their work is that the Horgan brothers captured life at a time when Ireland was emerging from centuries of British rule through to the formation of the Republic. This was all captured through the lens of Youghal and its hinterland.'
As both managing and creative director of Cormorant Films, she has already showcased some of the Horgans' pioneering work in a TG4 documentary Na Lumière Gaelacha (Na Deartháireacha Uí Argáin). It charts the sweep of their remarkable achievements, which include a long list of firsts.
The Horgans made some of the earliest films in Ireland between 1904 and 1920. In 1917, on the advice of American industrialist Henry Ford, they opened a 600-seat cinema, the first to have electricity. The Horgan Picture Theatre screened its own newsreel called The Youghal Gazette, another first.
They were visionaries and experimenters who used photographs and models to produce one of the earliest animation films in Ireland, a decade before Disney. It features the famous Youghal landmark, the Clock Gate Tower, pirouetting and dancing around the town.
They also pioneered the publication of picture postcards in Ireland, turning the endeavour into a lucrative business that allowed them to open their own photographic studio.
That opened another new chapter for the brothers whose creativity and sense of fun is evident in the props and costumes visible in the surviving glass plates that form an exceptional collection of photographs. It is that collection which prompted Darina Clancy to produce a book; she wanted those unrivalled images to be seen by a wider audience.
'There was no one place where the wealth of photos could be accessed. Some family members had photos that had never been seen, and others are available on the Cork County Library website.
'I also did this because to have such a wealth of historical moments captured and unavailable to the public seemed wrong,' she says.
There are almost 300 images in the book, including one of the Horgan matriarch, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Horgan with her children in the studio. Photo: Horgan Family Collection
'It's quite fantastic that we have a portrait of this woman with the town's singular lace, but also because she was the key to their success.
'She was the driving force behind them getting their shop open in Brown St and monetising their hobby.'
None of it might have happened because Elizabeth was left destitute after the death of her husband Timothy when the boys were still very young. The Famine was still a recent memory when the eldest, Thomas, was born in 1875. James was born in 1877, and Philip, the youngest, was born in 1879.
Shortly afterwards, and just seven years into their marriage, Timothy died of an asthma attack. His widow, then 39, was on the point of going into the workhouse when she found a sovereign that he had saved. That, in turn, saved the family and allowed the young Horgans to train to be shoemakers like their father.
Mary Ellen Horgan, her grandmother Elizabeth, her mother Norah and Marietta Horgan in the studio. Photo: Horgan Family Collection
At the same time, they developed an interest in photography and ran the two businesses side by side.
'In the beginning,' writes Clancy, 'their mother would ask customers, 'Is it Mr Horgan, the shoemaker, or Mr Horgan, the photographer, you'd like to see?'
'If the request was for the shoemakers, the brothers would arrive in leather aprons. If the request was for the photographers, they wore white coats.'
It is difficult to do justice to the brothers' range of achievements. Working at the intersection of art and technology, they were trailblazers whose work is of international significance.
The Irish Lumières
They have been compared to another set of brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, who invented cinema. The French pair projected moving photographic pictures on a screen for a paying audience in 1895.
While the Horgans did not invent cinema, they did adapt a projection device purchased from the Lumières to make a camera that they used to film King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra during their visit to Lismore Castle, Waterford, in 1904.
The strange-looking contraption — which was covered in a black cloth bag and operated by all three brothers — aroused the suspicion of the RIC who questioned them at length. But the Horgans won the day, as this wonderful account from 1948 shows.
'One herculean constable insisted on standing immediately in front of the lens and it was only possible to get the picture by pushing him aside suddenly as the royal party passed. His helmet slipped over his face and the picture was taken before he could adjust it. However, as the queen passed in her carriage, she apparently recognised the camera as such and, bowing graciously, smiled into the lens.'
The film, sadly, does not survive but hundreds of photographs do. They are fanciful, imaginative, and daring. James, a lover of amateur drama who painted sets for local dramatic productions, began to create sets and backdrops to allow for more imaginative photos.
James Horgan sitting by a backdrop. Photo: Horgan Family Collection
'They always injected fun, creativity and an opportunity to experience; you could, for example, drive your own motor car or fly in a hot air balloon,' explains Darina.
The Horgans took photos of themselves, too, to show what was possible in an age of invention. There's a photo of James sitting astride a half-moon playing guitar. In another, he's King Lear, then a sailor, then a giant on stilts.
There's a photo of the Horgan women in a set of a blimp and several showing them, bonnet-clad, in cars.
There's a particularly risque image of James, his wife Marietta, and family in their bathing suits. At one point, the local priest asked them to stop displaying similar beach images in their studio, but his request was ignored.
The Horgans were early 'photoshoppers' too, manipulating and adapting images to add details. They famously turned Youghal's main street into a Venice of the North with boats rowing under the Clock Gate Tower.
'There was one key theme,' says Darina Clancy.
'They mixed with everyone, from the gentry and business moguls to the poorest labourers, and they knew how to put everyone at their ease. People were very relaxed and they were having a lot of fun!'
The Horgan Brothers, The Irish Lumières by Darina Clancy, with contributions from Jim Horgan and Patricia Horgan Whyte, is published by Mercier Press, €19.99.
Read More
Retired fireman in the running to be named Ireland's best lollipop person