the color of ireland: "twelve irish artists"

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

The Color of Ireland: "Twelve Irish Artists"Author(s): Brendan RooneySource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 134-138Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557808 .

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Backward Glance: Twelve Irish Artists

to effect delight in the viewer rather than any sense of astonishment. These

defining qualities, of course, are highly subjective and serve as a reminder of the

difficulty in discerning a specific "national" spirit. Others analyzing the same

paintings could as easily have drawn entirely different conclusions.

With such a divergence of views and variety of opinions on this whole issue

of a distinctive school of art, is it possible to reach any conclusions even in

hindsight? If what Bruce Arnold calls "awkward strands of creative excellence

not tied to the evocation of a harmonious world narrowly conforming to

norms" are acknowledged, then an Irish school of painting did exist.12 It was

one marked by a kaleidoscopic diversity of trends of artists such as those

included in the book, plus others not included?like Jellett, Yeats, and other

more avant-garde modernists. All of them, be they academic or modernist, drew inspiration from the world around them in a truly imaginative way and

in doing so, created a distinctive national voice, albeit it one of many registers.

o^ NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND

12. See Bruce Arnold, "Jack Yeats and the Making of Irish Art in the Twentieth Century," in When

Time Began to Rant and Rage, p.52-62.

Brendan Rooney

The Color of Ireland:

Twelve Irish Artists

The works illustrated in Twelve Irish Artists are remarkable more for their sub

ject matter and boldness of execution than for their vibrancy. For decades, crit

ics had expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of bright color in the work of

Irish painters, and pondered its causes. As early as 1889, Rosa Mulholland, in

her assessment ofthat years' art in Ireland bemoaned indigenous artists' appar ent disinclination to enliven their palette. Her words, uttered in exasperation,

possess a slightly comic but familiar tone:

Whether it be due to the scantiness of our sunshine, and the coldness of our

atmosphere, or to some other cause, certain it is that too many brushes seem to

have learned a trick of moderating the hues of the prism with an infusion of

soot. In a land of rain, cloud and mist, we crave for the sun; yet these artists

grudge us a little warmth, as though the sunlight were a sin. After all, our sun

does sometimes shine and when it shines our artists ought to paint. When it

134




does not shine, they ought to have recourse to the stores which they limned in

a happier season.1

Such frustration was not confined to an Irish audience. Reviewing the exhi

bition at the New England Art Club in 1900, the critic for the London Times

harbored similar reservations about William Orpen, whose legacy is very much

in evidence in Twelve Irish Artists.2 "Mr Orpen," the critic stated "shows a ten

dency to blackness in his colour, but, if he can only learn to see the world a lit

tle more brightly, there seems to be no reason why he should not do fine

things."3 Mulholland was certainly not the only person to blame Irish artists'

apparent tameness on their inability to escape the weather. Writing in 1943, just three years after the publication of Twelve Irish Artists, lohn Hewitt, contribut

ing to the ongoing debate regarding the idea of an Irish school of painting,

regretted that he could not discuss "the possible effect of the Irish climate on

Irish landscape painting."4 The creativity associated with the Celtic Revival

around the turn of the twentieth century demonstrated that any lack of vibran

cy in Irish painting was not borne of a general lack of imagination or vision on

the part of the Irish population. Nor could it be attributed to an innate nation

al melancholy. Instead, it was borne of a desire on the part of a number of

prominent and ambitious artists to communicate an authentic, albeit mediat

ed, vision of Ireland. Hence, Mulholland's concerns and Hewitt's suspicions seem fundamentally misplaced.

In the preface to his Four Irish Landscape Painters of 1920, Thomas Bodkin, in typically proselytizing style, rejoiced in the elevated status that landscape

painting enjoyed in the hierarchy of modern painting. Indeed, he identified

landscape painting as the genre in which the progress of any national school

was first manifest throughout the nineteenth century. Bodkin maintained that

the Irish "by taste and opportunity are landscape lovers" whose country pro vided "almost every form of landscape dear to the painter."5 The late nine

teenth century had witnessed the dissolution of the division between land

scape and genre painting, and a number of the works illustrated in Twelve Irish

Artists represent an advanced manifestation of this trend. To use Bodkin's

i. Rosa Mulholland, "Irish Painters in the Present Year" The Irish Monthly, 17 (September, 1889),

484.

2. Both Keating and Leo Whelan were students of Orpen, but his influence extended far beyond the circle of artists who studied directly with him, Kernoffand Lamb were both strongly influenced

by Keating.

3. Times (London), 11 April 1900.

4. John Hewitt, "Some Observations on the History of Irish Painting," Lagan, 1 (1943), 98.

5. Thomas Bodkin, Four Irish Landscape Painters (London: The Talbot Press, 1920), p. xiv.

135




words, the landscapes that feature in these works are not "a mere background

accessory," but defining, integral elements of the overall compositions.6 The integrated nature of these pictures is attributable largely to the manner

in which the figures are as much "of the land" as "on the land." This effect was

achieved in a variety of ways?tonal, compositional, chromatic, or contextu

al?depending on the style, vision, and technique of each artist. John Losito

and James Steward have observed, for example, that in Going to Massy James Humbert Craig "relegated the figures to the status of landscape elements of a

piece with their setting, rendering them with the same broad brushstrokes and

attention to detail that he uses to create the clouds and mountains."7 Alterna

tively, one can see how William Conor's peasants connect with their surround

ings by comparing his cheerful painting of The Low Backed Car with his con

siderably more somber The launting Car (c. 1933, Ulster Museum), in which

members of the urban poor drive along a street in Belfast. Compositionally, the

two pictures are extremely close, but while the picturesque, mountainous land

scape in the former complements the levity and freedom of the children who

ride upon the car, the seemingly unending terrace of worker's cottages in the

latter is indicative of the crowded, industrial environment that enervates its

inhabitants.

Likewise, Grace Henry's figures, huddled on a hilltop against a billowing

cloudy sky, also merge with their surroundings. The apparently random folds

and rich colours of their heavy clothes, thickly painted and darkly delineated,

echo the patterns and colors of the earth and sky against which they set. As a

result, the entire ensemble has the coherence of a tapestry. Paul Henry's Old

People Watching a Dance does not feature a landscape, but its earthy tones and

broad modeling suggest the rugged environment from which its figures come.

Moreover, Henry's figures share a monumentality with Lamb's stoical peas

ants, MacGonigal's equally robust characters and Grace Henry's tight huddle of

women. With typical theatricality, Sean Keating's peasants, many of whom are

also sitting, seem to lay claim to the little harbor that is the focal point of their

labor and community. The sedentary or static poses of many of these peasants

exemplify their union with, or permanence, on the land.

These modern concepts of integrated composition complement the pic tures' relevance to art of earlier generations in Ireland, including that which

Mulholland found so frustrating. Many of the works represented in Twelve

Irish Artists represent a synthesis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century aes

thetic and broader cultural sensibilities. This relates not just to the elevation

6. Four Irish Landscape Painters^ p. xiv.

7. James Steward and Bruce Arnold, When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative Painting from

Twentieth-Century Ireland (New York: Merrell Holberton, 1998), p.84.

136




and celebration in art of the Irish peasant and the Irish landscape, but also to

specific themes. MacGonigal's Hearing the News calls to mind Erskine Nicol's

The 'merican Difficulty (1862, Ulster Museum), Howard Helmick's News of the

Land League (1881, National Gallery of Ireland,), and even more so James Bre

nan's Letter from America (1875, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork), while Leo

Whelan's more orthodox composition, A Kerry Cobbler, is reminiscent of a

number of earlier Irish interior scenes by such artists as Aloysius O'Kelly, William Orpen and particularly Nicol and Brenan.8

The same can be said of the landscapes themselves. Indeed, those same

skies that were indicative of the Irish climate that confounded Mulholland had

been one of the most arresting and expressive elements of Irish landscape

painting since the eighteenth century. William Ashford's overcast seascapes, Thomas Roberts's vaporous atmospheres, Edwin Hayes's scudding and John

Faulkner's voluminous clouds, and Nathaniel Hone the Younger's "rolling west

ern skies,"9 all characteristically Irish, are reflected and reinterpreted in the

work of these twentieth-century artists.

There were, of course, significant colorists among the generation of

painters represented in Twelve Irish Artists. Indeed, some of the artists includ

ed, such as Grace Henry, became more expressive (as distinct from evocative)

subsequently in their use of color. The absence of Jack B. Yeats from a collection

of early twentieth-century Irish artists is conspicuous, but his mature paint

ings, albeit with their thick impasto and unnaturalistic color, would arguably have been less incongruous in this context than pictures by, for instance, John

Luke, JE, Mary Swanzy, Mainie Jellett, and Nora McGuinness.

The selection of pictures in Twelve Irish Artists does not reflect an aversion

to color on the part of either Victor Waddington or Thomas Bodkin. A survey of the paintings Waddington sold, and those that passed on exhibition through his galleries, demonstrates how catholic his tastes were.10 The twelve pictures

do, however, represent well the type of work he favored at the time. Thomas

Bodkin, for his part, had a deep admiration for Jack B. Yeats, but expressed, in

his introduction, his belief that Twelve Irish Artists "offers fine material for a

judgment on the style and merits of the modern school of Irish Pictorial Art."11

The earthy tones, tempered palettes, and bold modeling in evidence in

8. Though evangelical in his desire to promote the development of the visual arts in Ireland,

Bodkin was mindful of Ireland's existing heritage. He made sure, for example, to acknowledge that

Nathaniel Hone the Younger, "a landscape painter second to none," was the grand-nephew of Hone

the Elder. Thomas Bodkin, "Art in Ireland " Hermes, 4 (February, 1908), 12.

9. Julian Campbell, Nathaniel Hone the Younger (Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), p. 118.

10. S. B. Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1991), pp. 149-53.

11. Thomas Bodkin, introduction, Twelve Irish Artists (Dublin: Victor Waddington Publications,

1940), p. 5.

137




Twelve Irish Artists are one manifestation of the "search for 'essence' or 'soul,'"12

as much of Ireland's people as of its landscape, which was shared by resident

Irish artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Mulholland and Hewitt

were, perhaps, longing for color that belonged to other climes, and would not

have appreciated Bodkin's belief that the hues that delighted Irish painters

recording their own environment were "tender rather than rich, and the mood

of [their] fancy... lyric and nostalgic rather than didactic and exploratory."13 The relevant pictures in Twelve Irish Artists represent a genuine attempt to cap ture the authentic character of the Irish rural landscape in its broadest sense.

c^> NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND

12. Kenneth McConkey, A Free Spirit: Irish Art, 1860-1960 (London: Pyms Gallery, 1990), p.65.

13. Twelve Irish Artists, p. 7.

Anne Kelly

Thomas Bodkin, Arts Policy, and Exile

Thomas Bodkin provided the introduction to Twelve Irish Artists following an

invitation from Victor Waddington on January 20, 1940. The fee was ten

guineas for a piece of 1200-1500 words, later increased to 2500.l Blocks were

proofed in Leeds in May and the introduction was acknowledged by Wadding ton on June 11. The printer, Colm ? Lochlainn, sent the galleys of the intro

duction to Bodkin on June 21, 1940. Bodkin was writing from Birmingham, where he was professor of fine arts appointed to establish the Barber Institute

at the University of Birmingham. He had moved there in 1935 from his position as director of the National Gallery of Ireland, a position he held from 1927 until

his departure for Birmingham. His final years at the gallery had been fraught with difficulty and all attempts by him to put the institution on a sound admin

istrative footing had failed owing to a combination of economic stringency, bureaucratic intransigence, and Bodkin's own confrontational personality. A

reluctant exile to Britain, he continued to have a bittersweet relationship with

Ireland. He felt a strong sense of injustice at being forced to leave Ireland, as

well as a longing for home that always drew him back spiritually and physical

ly. He never missed an opportunity to return, even during the Emergency, when travel to Ireland from wartime Britain was very difficult. His quotation in

i. Alan Denson, Thomas Bodkin: A Bio-bibliographical Survey (Dublin: The Bodkin Trustees,

1966), p. 32.

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