Nathaniel Grogan was born in Cork c.1740. He was apprenticed to his father, a turner and block-maker. He began to draw using humble materials of chalk on board. He was encouraged by John Butts, but his father was so hostile to his effects, that Grogan enlisted in the army and served in America and the West Indies. After returning to Cork, he tried to support himself with his painting and teaching, encouraged again by Butts. He painted landscapes, represented scenes of Cork, and did decorations for houses (eg. ceilings, walls and doors at Mount Vernon). He painted small oils of views of interest around Cork, eg: of the Entrance Gate, the Gothic Temple at Tivoli, and a view across the River Lee from Blackrock Castle. Twelve aquatint views of Cork and surroundings were advertised in the New Cork Evening Post in 1796. They show his interest in country people at work. Scenes from Irish country life, humourous peasant subjects, influenced by seventeenth century Dutch interiors, seem to have been his forte, (eg. The Wake, The Bantry Bard, The Itinerant Preacher, Winter Scene with Skates and Irish Fair).

Among his most popular paintings are his more straightforward landscapes of Cork such as Boats in the River Lee below Tivoli, Co. Cork. (NGI), regarded by Crookshank and Glin as his masterpiece, and the Crawford Gallery painting View of Cork a detailed panoramic view of the quays and of Shandon church. Four of his landscapes were exhibited at the Free Society of Artists in London in 1792, and it is possible that he spent a short time in London. In Cork he lived in a small house on the south side of the Mardyke.

His sons Nathaniel and Joseph Grogan also became painters.

According to Strickland:-
"Grogan enjoyed a considerable reputation in Cork; but his art is crude and hardly deserves the encomiums it received. Under more favourable circumstances, and with a             proper training, he might have achieved more than a mere reputation...."

Grogan died in 1807, and was buried at St. Finbarr's Church.

Ref:                       
A Dictionary of Irish Artists by W.G. Strickland, Vol.1
The Painters of Ireland c.1660-1920 by Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin 1978
Gleanings on Old Cork Artists by R.D., Cork Historical and Arhcaeological Journal Vol.VI, p.106-108