Born at the Doone, Athlone, his father was Lord Lieutenant of Athlone. He was educated at Galway Grammar School and Kingsley College, in Devon. Initially he studied modelling at Leeds but became dissatisfied with the limitations of the medium and abandoned it for paint. At Julian's Academy, Paris he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He then went on a painting tour taking in Barcelona, Majorca, Venice and Verona where, according to historian of Irish arts and crafts, Nicola Gordon Bowe, he appears to have come under the influence of the Italian Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini, before returning to live in London.

After his marriage in 1927 he moved to live at Chalcot Studios, Mount Hawke, Truro, although he retained a London home and he exhibited with STISA at Lanham's that same year. In 1936 he held a solo show at No 6, Piazza Studios, and a joint show with Ruth DAVENPORT the following year. He moved to Newlyn some eight years prior to his death in 1946, though he had exhibited at NAG sporadically since at least 1929, perhaps earlier.