Essentially a realist painter, Hector McDonnell is one of the finest figurative Irish artists of his generation. Best known for his observations of daily life ranging from, launderettes, cafes, bars, small shops and even lavatories, he captures the mundane and ordinary with an extraordinary quality. McDonnell has also painted in Tibet, India, China and Rwanda, resulting in a series of etchings and facsimile sketchbooks which document his exotic travels. Hector McDonnell, the youngest son of the thirteenth Earl and Countess of Antrim, was born in 1947 in Belfast and raised at Glenarm in Co. Antrim. After school he travelled to Munich and Vienna to study painting and sculpture, working for a time in the studio of Hans Wotruba, the last of Vienna’s great Secessionist sculptors. Then having graduated with a History degree from Oxford, where he spent many of his afternoon’s life-drawing at the Ruskin, he became a painter full-time. McDonnell has since exhibited widely in Europe; Munich, Brussels, London, Stuttgart, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm and Madrid. Winning on one of Germany’s most illustrious art prizes, the ‘Darmstadter Kunstpreis’ in 1979, which resulted in a major museum exhibition at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, featuring over 200 of his paintings, drawings and etchings. In December 2003, a major retrospective exhibition took place at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.