Dr Nathan O’Donnell is the Irish Research Council Enterprise Postdoctoral Fellow, Freud Project – a two-year programme of research in relation to the IMMA Collection: Freud Project. Based between IMMA and the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin, O’Donnell explores Lucian Freud’s relationship to Ireland, examining his relationships with Irish artists and writers, the time he spent in Ireland in the 1940s and 50s, and his later interactions with Irish emigrants in London.

This fellowship includes a number of public interactions, in the form of symposia, reading groups, talks, and this conference. O’Donnell’s research will be published in various formats across the two-year period, and will feed into the broader curatorial programme of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project.

Dr Nathan O’Donnell is a writer and researcher with a scholarly background in twentieth-century British art and magazine publishing. He is one of the co-editors of Paper Visual Art Journal, and he publishes on contemporary art here and elsewhere, including The Dublin Review, Gorse, Apollo: The International Art Magazine, The Irish Times and Architecture Ireland. He has been the recipient of a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council Ireland, as well as artist commissions from IMMA and South Dublin County Council. He also teaches part-time as part of the MA Art in the Contemporary World at National College of Art & Design, Dublin, and his first book, on Wyndham Lewis’s art criticism, is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press.

The Freud Research Fellowship is mentored at IMMA by Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator: Head of Collections.

Supported by the Irish Research Council, through the Enterprise Partner Scheme (EPS) awards programme

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was one of the greatest realist painters of the 20th century. Renowned for his portrayal of the human form, Freud is best known for his intimate, honest, often visceral portraits. Working only from life Freud’s studio was intensely private and he mainly worked with those he was close to, often asking subjects to sit for hundreds of hours over multiple sittings to better capture the essence of their personality.  VIEW ARTIST