George Bernard Shaw at Coole Park

Unknown photographer

George Bernard Shaw at Coole Park

1915

Courtesy of Colin Smythe

George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte stayed at Coole Park for four weeks in April and May 1915. This photo shows Gregory's grandson, Richard, just turned six, at the wheel of the Shaws' car-their chauffeur stands behind the vehicle-while his sisters Anne, nearly four, and Catherine, not quite two, look on from an upstairs window. During this visit to Coole, Charlotte Shaw remarked that no good portrait of Shaw had been painted. Gregory promptly invited Augustus John to come, and he completed three major oil paintings of Shaw, now at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The visit, one of several the Shaws made to Coole, was ended by news of Hugh Lane's death when the Lusitania was torpedoed and sank in May 1915.