Hector McDonnell facts for kids
The Hon. Hector John McDonnell (born 1947) is a Northern Irish painter, etcher, and author, specializing in architectural art, landscape, and portrait work.
Early life
A younger son of Randal McDonnell, 8th Earl of Antrim, by his marriage to the sculptor Angela Sykes, and the younger brother of Alexander McDonnell, Hector McDonnell was born in Belfast. He grew up on the family estate at Glenarm, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read modern history. In 1965 and 1966, before going up to Oxford, he studied painting in Munich and Vienna.
Artistic career
McDonnell lives and works in Northern Ireland and New York, but maintains close links with Germany. In 1979, he was the winner of the Darmstädter Kunstpreis and held a Retrospective Exhibition at the Matildenhöhe, Darmstadt, in 1981. His first book, The Ould Orange Flute, was published in 1983. A further Retrospective Exhibition was at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, from 2003 to 2004. The Belfast Telegraph has described McDonnell as "one of Ireland's greatest living artists".
Personal life
In 1969 McDonell married Catherine Elizabeth, a daughter of Ronald Chapman, and had a daughter, born in 1971, and a son born the next year, before they divorced in 1974. He also has a daughter by Wendy Lindbergh, born in 2000. In 2019 he was living at the Old Rectory, Glenarm.
McDonnell is an uncle of the Earl of Antrim and the artist Lady Flora McDonnell.
