 He spent considerable time in San Francisco, from c. 1871–1877.From 1877–1878, Irwin trained in Paris with the famous French portraitist Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran (1838 – 1917), and exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1879.He returned to the United States in 1879, where he spent time in Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts; Louisville, Kentucky, New York City, and Yonkers, throughout the 1880s and 1890s.