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Born in Dublin in 1952, Frank Walsh learned how to duck and dive at an early age. Abandoned by his parents, for whom alcohol was high on their list of priorities, he was brought up in a Christian Brothers orphanage. In his early teens, he was reunited with his mother, who later smuggled her 15-year-old son out of the institution, and took him to London, where they became great drinking companions. He visited a church jumble sale where he bought some silver for sixpence and I sold it on to an antique dealer for £10 – a fortune for a young lad in the late sixties. Although he has not achieved such a successful mark-up since then, it set the pattern for his working life. He was in and out of church sales, buying anything which caught his ever-improving eye until the Antiques Roadshow on television came along in the early eighties and ruined it all for the likes of Frank, who gave up drinking about the same time.
Frank says: 'With all these books and TV programmes, anyone who has a worthless print thinks he’s got a Rembrandt and poor people like me don’t get a look-in. And they won’t be educated. They won’t believe that their bit of tat is not a valuable Persian carpet. It’s Joe Public who are the rip-off merchants, not antique dealers who are usually as honest as the day is long. Take something that’s worth £100: Joe Public wants to sell it for £500 and won’t believe it’s not worth that, but a dealer will sell it to me for £50, and I’ll sell it on to another dealer for £60, and everyone is happy. I had one stroke of luck which kick-started me into the business, but I’ve never had one of those Antiques Roadshow finds since, and nor have I come across anyone else who has either. These days, if I find one quality piece of furniture, jewellery or a painting on Monday, and sell it by Friday, it’s paid for the rent and a loaf of bread and I’m a happy man.'
Royal Society of Portrait Painter's People's Portraits collection at Girton College, University of Cambridge
Cambridge
Title
Frank Walsh, Wheeler-Dealer
Date
2000
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 120 x W 100 cm
Accession number
482
Acquisition method
on loan from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Work type
Painting
Inscription description
signature
