![The Holy Ghost Watching over Christ](https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w800h800/collection/NID/RUA/NID_RUA_17_001.jpg)
The Holy Ghost Watching over Christ 1942
John Langtry Lynas (1879–1956)
Royal Ulster Academy Diploma Collection
Painter, sculptor and illustrator, born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, his parents having Ulster origins. They moved there when he was still small. He attended the Model School in Belfast, spent a short time at Belfast School of Art and in his mid-twenties, without adequate resources, embarked on a trip through Europe and was later said to have studied art in London and Paris. In Belfast did a variety of jobs such as building and signwriting to support self and family. Exhibited at RHA, RUA and at Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. Magee’s Gallery gave him a solo show in 1939, CEMA in 1952. Among books illustrated by Lynas was Why, published in 1935. Ulster Museum holds his self-portrait. The Ulster critic John Hewitt remembered Lynas as “that diminutive rowdy … forever creating a scene and stumping out in a temper” at exhibitions, “his few pictures in conté crayon the aborted sprouts of his vast imaginings.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)