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Career

After completing his studies, Richard Moynan returned to Dublin in the winter of 1886, where he set up practice as a professional painter.

Conscious of networking, he joined several artists' associations, became a member of the Dublin Art Club committee and was elected President of the Dublin Sketching Club in October 1889. In the same month, he became an Associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, achieving full membership in July of the following year. He cemented this position by becoming a member of the Grand Chapter of Freemasonry. Works dating from this period demonstrate his ability to interpret the role of the artist in society imaginatively.

Richard Moynan is an Irish artist who used his work to help forge stronger bonds with Britain and its empire. April 1887 marked the beginning of a short but intense period where Moynan became a political cartoonist with a unionist publication. Moynan wrote to The Union and issued a personal statement against the violent murders of Cavendish and Burke. He signed the letter under the pseudonym Lex, a name he would use throughout his career as a political cartoonist. Lex's illustrations in The Union were executed in black and white, measuring 35 x 29 cm, and were originally distributed free of charge with the newspaper. In August 1888, Lex's cartoons were drawn directly onto the front page. The subject of the images reinforced the editor's central message for each relevant edition.

Throughout his career, Richard Moynan interspersed his studies of the scenic South County Dublin with depictions of the homeless and strays who inhabited the capital. He took his role as a professional painter seriously. He concentrated his efforts on one large-scale painting each year, which he exhibited alongside commissioned portraits, landscapes and genre paintings. In the early 1890s, Moynan's studio practice changed and he began increasingly working outdoors. This change becomes evident in genre subjects such as Ball in the Cap (1893) or Invitation to go Haymaking (1898).

He produced works depicting group interiors, such as Girls Reading a Newspaper (1885). However, he is best known for his Military Manoeuvres at the National Gallery of play.