Edgar Bundy

Private collection, South Carolina

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1896, no. 101, p. 8.

Witchcraft: The Library of Esoterica, Jessica Hundley and Pam Grossman, eds., 2021, p. 261, illustrated.

London, Royal Academy, 1896, no. 101

The murder of Bridget Cleary, an Irish dressmaker accused of being a witch by her family and burned alive in March 1895, captivated audiences across the United Kingdom who read of her tragic and violent death and followed the ensuing trial. The crime and its incessant coverage in England, where the last witch trial was in 1751, fueled debate over Ireland's ability to self-govern despite their desire to secure internal autonomy within the British Empire. Painted a year after the murder and exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British public of 1896 would have recalled the Cleary case and may have seen Bundy's cackling witch as a disparaging commentary on the Irish Home Rule Movement. Bundy's early life as an artist, with no formal training, is shrouded in mystery. He is recorded as having worked in the studio of Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881. He later exhibited at the Paris Salon and in 1915 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.