Brady, Charles (1926–97), painter, was born 27 July 1926 in New York, son of Arthur Brady, an industrial hardware merchant. He is best known for small-scale paintings of still life and landscape. At the end of the second world war, while serving with the US navy, he suffered an accident which resulted in his discharge. As a result of this he had the opportunity of pursuing further study. In 1948 he enrolled at the Art Students League. Founded in New York in 1875 and distinguished by its progressive approach to art education, it was one of the most important art schools in America in the early twentieth century. Initially Brady studied design and fashion before studying fine art under John Groth and Morris Kantor. In 1949 he became Groth's assistant. In 1950 his work was included in the exhibition ‘American painting 1950’, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where he was employed as a guard at the time. Around this time he met artists associated with abstract expressionism such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, and exhibited with them in exhibitions such as the ‘9th Street Show’ (1951). Four years later Brady's first solo exhibition was held at the Urban Gallery, New York. By this time his father, mother, and a younger brother had all died. In 1956 he decided to leave New York and spend some time in Ireland.
On his arrival he based himself in Lismore, Co. Waterford, where the landscapes he began to paint were in contrast to the abstract style he had developed in New York. In May 1956 he joined his aunt and uncle on a tour that included London and Paris. He remained in Ireland until early in 1958 and during this time became acquainted with such figures as Camille Souter, Frank Morris (qv), and Desmond McAvock. Though he spent the next year in America, he soon decided to return to Ireland. In 1959 he was living in Dublin, where, along with artists such as Noel Sheridan and Patrick Pye, he was involved in founding the Independent Artists group. His work was included in the group's first exhibition in 1960. That same year he married Eelagh Noonan and the couple went to live in Spain. On their return to Ireland (1961) they settled in Dún Laoghaire, where Brady began to produce still lifes of objects such as envelopes and boxes painted in muted tones. Though figurative, the painterly quality of these works and the way in which they assert the flat nature of the picture plane suggest something of Brady's experience of postwar American abstract art. Soft, hazy light, another key characteristic of Brady's work, can also be seen in his paintings of Sandymount strand, which might be compared with the work of Nathaniel Hone (qv) the younger, whose work Brady had seen on his first trip to Ireland. He also worked in other media, producing lithographs and, from the mid 1980s, small bronzes of such mundane objects as discarded bus tickets.
From 1976 to 1983 he lectured in painting at the National College of Art and Design. In 1981 he became a member of Aosdána and in 1994 he was elected an honorary member of the RHA. Brady exhibited regularly in Ireland at venues such as the RHA. He received a number of awards including the P. J. Carroll award at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art as well as the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal and the landscape award at the oireachtas exhibitions of 1973 and 1989 respectively.
Charles Brady died 1 August 1997 in Dublin. His work can be found in collections such as those of the Arts Council of Ireland, Bank of Ireland, Ulster Museum, Allied Irish Bank, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane of Modern Art.