Through his family's religious connections he gained the patronage of Cardinal Wiseman, whose portrait he painted in 1858, and through Wiseman's influence was appointed commissioner for the Papal States to the London Exhibition of 1862 and a knight of the order of Pope Pius IX. He also painted frescoes in the chapel of the Dominican convent at Cabra, near Dublin. He died suddenly of heart disease at his home in Mayfair, London, on 17 February 1892.