Courtesy of Quinnipiac University
September 17, 2012
Daniel MacDonald (originally McDaniel) (1821-1853) was one of the few Irish painters to focus attention on the Great Famine during the late 1840s. He was born in 1821 in Cork, the son of the caricaturist and draughtsman James McDaniel, who taught him drawing at an early age. In his early 20s, MacDonald left for London, and was there when the famine broke out. He returned to paint one of the few pictures showing an actual scene from the famine, the genre painting "This Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of Their Store." MacDonald's role in publicizing the tragedy is said to not have been fully recognized.