Lost and Found: The Story of Ireland’s Most Famous War Painting - A Lecture by Ronan McGreevy

The Chancellor of the National University of Ireland and the Cork Public Museum request the pleasure of your company at:

Lost and Found: The Story of Ireland’s Most Famous War Painting

A Lecture by Ronan McGreevy

at 6pm Thursday 24 April 2025

Cork Public Museum

The lecture will be followed by a guided tour of the museum exhibition: The Last General Absolution: War, Loss & Memory by Gerry White.  

Gerry White is a founding member and chair of the Cork Branch of the The Western Front Association since 2010. He served forty-three years in the Irish Defence Forces and retired in 2017. During his military service, he had the honour of representing Ireland at the Centenary Commemoration of the Battle of the Somme at Thiepval in 2016. He has also published a number of books and articles on aspects of Irish military history for the period 1913 to 1923 and lectures on same. Gerry is currently focused on building the WFA organisation on the island of Ireland.

As part of the exhibition, Cork Public Museum are delighted to be able to display publicly for the first time one of the earliest known painted copies of the iconic Great War painting The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue de Bois. Though the painting is internationally renowned, its close connections to Cork have never been explored. This exhibition will serve to tell the background of the painting, and the lives of the men depicted in it.

This exhibition is a collaboration between Cork Public Museum, the Cork Branch of the Western Front Association, Cork City Council, as well as the Dublin Diocesan Archives.

Copies of the recently published National University of Ireland Centenary Roll of Honour and Essays edited by Ronan McGreevy and Emer Purcell will be on sale on the night, and can also be purchased online from www.fourcourtspress.ie. The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue de Bois features on the front cover of this book.