Dublin's Hidden Treasure

Irish Arts Review

Dublin's Hidden TreasureAuthor(s): Dorothy WalkerSource: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 28-36Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492002 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

DUBLIN'S HIDDEN TREASURE

Dublin's modern art gallery, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of

Modern Art, is not so well known to the citizens as it might be. For the last twenty years, it has suffered a slow strangulation, as lack of storage space, and lack of any dynamic or political will

to solve the problem, have gradually paralyzed the Gallery's activities. While it owes its existence to the efforts of Sir

Hugh Lane, an energetic art dealer and collector who was active in Dublin and London at the turn of the century, but who perished in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, it is ironic that it was

his very insistence that the Gallery should be a municipal, rather than a national, gallery which has caused many of its problems. His idea always was to persuade Dublin Corporation to build a gallery of modern art for the city, hence the city bureaucracy's stranglehold on the functioning of the Gallery, through an excess of democracy which requires every decision to go through (1) the Advisory Committee to the Gallery, (2) the Cultural Committee of the City

Council, (3) the City Council itself, and (4) the City Manager. The City authorities provide an annual allow ance of Ir?750,000 for the operation of the Gallery. It would appear, however, that this sum is inadequate.

Sir Hugh Lane was part of a very active Anglo-Irish cultural coterie in Dublin at the end of the nineteenth century. In literature and drama this Celtic Twilight activity brightened in ternationally into the Celtic Revival.

The visual arts were less well-known, probably for the reason that there was no outstanding institution to act as a focal centre, as the Abbey Theatre later did for the dramatic work of Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory. There were outstanding artists such as William Orpen, John Butler Yeats (and later his son Jack), Roderic O'Conor, Walter

Osborne, and John Lavery, and out standing women like Sarah Purser, the first professional woman artist of the century. She founded An Tar Gloine (the Tower of Glass), a stained glass studio which was instrumental in estab lishing the 'rich vein of this art that

reached its peak with the work of Harry Clarke and Evie Hone. The Yeats sis

ters, Lily and Lolly, were active in the Dun Emer Guild, a craft co-operative which worked closely with Jack Yeats and other artists.

Dorothy Walker, a member of the Advisory Committee to the

Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, writes of some of the marvellous works of Art in that Gallery's collection.

It was also a time of political involve ment in the Irish nationalist cause by the Anglo-Irish community, such as Sir

Horace Plunket's Co-operative Move ment in agriculture, and the more direct revolutionary involvement of Countess

Markievicz and Miss Maud Gonne. The artists, however, tended to show their work and make their reputation out side Ireland, in France or in London.

Hugh Lane was Lady Gregory's nephew and was a successful art dealer. His main personal interest, however, was in the avant-garde of his youth, the French Impressionists and he purchas ed their work with great discrimination. He bought, for example, one of Renoir's most formally interesting paintings 'Les Parapluies', almost schematic in its re stricted colour range of different tones of blue and its composition of geo metrical umbrella shapes. That single painting is the nearest any Impressionist painter came to the succeeding gener ation's interest in flat planes and for

mal colour values, and it must certainly have greatly interested Cezanne and the emerging Modernist painters of the early twentieth century.

For years Hugh Lane urged Dublin Corporation to establish a modern art gallery. He commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to design a gallery in the form of a bridge across the Liffey. In my own opinion, it was a merciful escape that this was not built, as its design was of

massive classical heaviness which would not only have destroyed the vista of the river but which was quite at odds with

Dublin's light, strict, elegant eighteenth century character. Given its restricted size and site, it would have made the current expansion problems of the Gallery very much worse.

A gallery of modern art for Dublin was eventually established under a sub Committee of the Public Libraries Committee, at 17 Harcourt Street, in 1908, with Sir Hugh Lane as Director.1 Three hundred works were donated or loaned by well-wishers, and it is inter esting to recall who some of these donors were and what they gave. The

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most prominent names were the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince don ated seven works including some tiny Constables which are, in fact the best work of this over-rated painter, 'Cloud Study', 'Brighton' and 'Weymouth Bay', all of them sky paintings, as well as the

more prosaic 'The Elder Tree'. He also gave a Corot 'Fisherman' and a fine Harpignies landscape. Corot was ob viously immensely popular at the time; the painter, Rose Barton, organized a subscription to buy 'Rome from the Pincio', now one of the most envied Corots in the Gallery's collection; the "Ladies of Ireland" donated 'Woman

Meditating', not exactly a celebration of woman's role in life, since the poor woman looks rather glum in her thoughts. There is also a curious small painting of a peasant woman in a garnet-red hat and mediaeval-looking dress. Sir Hugh Lane gave 'Landscape, Sunset', an interesting painting in which Corot synthesized his romantic, misty tree painting with his quite different sense of space. This was Corot's last

work, painted on his deathbed. Dublin was the first public gallery in Great Britain and Ireland to possess a repres entative group of Corot's work. Lady Ardilaun, wife of the Lord Lieutenant at the time, gave a suitable painting for her station 'Blush Roses in a Glass' by Fantin-Latour; at least if she wished to buy nice safe paintings of roses, she had the good sense to buy a good painter.

Degas's oil sketch of a peasant woman was purchased with a fund collected by Mrs C.F. McCarthy, while the Viscount ess de Vesci and the Earl of Drogheda combined forces to present the large portrait of Hugh Lane's sister, Mrs Shine, by Mancini, which has a distinct resemblance to the current Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mrs Carmencita Hederman. Daubigny's 'Un Coup de Vent' was presented by Mr Fairfax Murray, "in

memory of his friend Sir Frederick Burton", a well-known Irish painter of the nineteenth century who was also

Director of the National Gallery in London.

That original collection still forms the

solid nucleus of the Gallery. Hugh Lane, however, was far from satisfied with this

small beginning. In his introduction to

the original catalogue of 1908, he had

said: "I now hand over my collection of

pictures and drawings of the British Schools (70) and Rodin's Masterpiece,



IRISH ARTS REVIEW


'L'Age d'Airain.' I also present the group of portraits of contemporary Irishmen and women (which will be added to as time goes on). These are to be ceded to the National Portrait Gallery when the usual time limit has elapsed. I hope that this Gallery will always fulfil the object for which it is intended, and - by ceding to the National Gallery those pictures which, having stood the test of time, are no longer modern - make room for good examples of the move

ments of the day. The National Gallery can encourage this desire on my part by depositing in this Gallery the few modern pictures which it has (recently) acquired. I have also deposited here my collection of pictures by Continental artists, and intend to present the most of them, provided that the promised permanent building is erected on a suitable site within the next few years."2

When the "few years" passed, and the

Great War broke out without the Cor poration having erected a permanent building, in his pique Lane bequeathed his collection of Impressionist paintings to the National Gallery in London. Sub sequently he repented of this decision and added a codicil to his will, leaving the paintings to Dublin. Unfortunately this codicil was not witnessed and legal battles raged as to which city should have them. A compromise was reached in 1959 by which half the collection was loaned to Dublin for five years at a time. Under a new agreement reached in 1979, thirty of the thirty-nine paintings will be on loan to Dublin for fourteen years.

The Gallery is now housed in Charle mont House, the town mansion designed for the Earl of Charlemont by the dist inguished eighteenth-century architect, Sir William Chambers, who also design ed the Casino at Marino for the same

client. Charlemont House was designed in 1763; it later became the offices of the Registrar-General, and in 1927 was presented by the Irish Government to Dublin Corporation to house the Municipal Art Gallery. The nine extra picture galleries and the sculpture hall were added to the main house at this time, replacing Lord Charlemont's three libraries which had been demolished in the garden at the rear of the house. The

Gallery was formally opened to the public in 1933.

Charlemont House was, in concept, a fitting venue for an art gallery, since the Earl of Charlemont was one of the most civilized of noblemen in his day. His interests were principally literary; he founded and was the first President of the Royal Irish Academy, and, as an ardent collector of books, built up a famous library, but in his drawing-room he had Rembrandt's 'Judas Returning

Lavacourt, Winter 1881 by Claude Monet, 23?/2" x 30?", oil on canvas.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


the Thirty Pieces of Silver,' Titian's portrait of Cesare Borgia, and Hogarth's 'The Gate of Calais' and 'The Lady's

Last Stake', among others. Hugh Lane's great Manet portrait of

'Eva Gonzalez' would have been fit company for these, and ideally should hang in that former drawing-room, now the first-floor library, which is being restored to period by the City Archi tect's office, pending repairs to the ceiling and to the upper floors of the house. The latter were discovered to be in a near-ruinous condition three years ago and have had to undergo extremely lengthy and costly re-building and re storation.

'Eva Gonzalez' (1870) is one of the great paintings of Europe. The artist sits in a white dress at her easel, painting peonies, her white arms extended, white peonies on the floor at her feet. A Spaniard of Jewish descent, she was

Manet's favourite pupil but unfor tunately she died before her talent had fully developed.3 Manet painted a separate study of the peonies which now hangs in the new Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The Irish painter, Louis le Brocquy, who acknowledges Manet as one of his aesthetic fathers, has painted his own version of Manet's peonies in 'Homage to Manet', included in the

Artists for Amnesty Sale in Dublin in 1982.

Manet, like Velasquez, had the gift of fusing two realities in his painting, the primary reality of the realist image with whatever iconographic significance it may have, and the more profound reality of the autonomy and energy of the painting, irrespective of its iconographic message. The twentieth century, in its abstract art, has re-instated this second reality to the importance it had before the Renaissance. Other great painters, like Rembrandt and Goya, achieved a similar fusion of the body and soul of painting, but their work was more in tense. The particular gift of both Manet and Velasquez is to have retained a cool, detached character, while every inch of the painting is eloquent. Eva's dress, of some light, airy stuff like organdy or muslin, is painted, layer upon layer of it, in almost careless buoyant volumes of cloudy white paint floating against a simple dark grey to black background.

Sotheby's experts have suggested that if 'Les Parapluies', a most unusual

Renoir, were offered for sale on the in ternational commercial art market, it could well command ?25-?30 million, surpassing the world record price paid for Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' while the estimate for 'Eva Gonzalez' would be at least ?1 2-?1 5 million.

The two Monets in the Gallery's collection are both typical of the best mainstream Monet at the height of Impressionism. 'Waterloo Bridge', which belongs to the Gallery and not to the Lane Collection, is from Monet's 1900 visit to London when the smog, the smoky sky over factory chimneys by the grimy river bank, and the general gloom of London, struck him so forcibly in contrast to his airy and beautiful Paris. It gave him, however, ample opportunity for atmospheric effects: the moody dark blues and lugubrious tones of the river are infused with extraordinary life and energy, and the atmospheric pollution of the London sky is transmuted to a painted reality of great power and beauty.

The other Monet 'Lavacourt - Winter' (1881), from the Lane Collection, is

one of Monet's numerous paintings of the landscape covered in snow. The snowy light obviously fascinated him; to catch the colour, he used a fabulous blue-white which creates much extra space, and reflects the light back on to a pale green-yellow sky, on to washed-out pastel colours, the pink/blue hill, the pink/yellow lake. There is an intoxic ation with insane colours there in front of his eyes, and there is nothing between us and him, between us and his eyes seeing these almost abstract improbab ilities, no distracting images, just light and cold, soft colour.

Berthe Morisot's 'Jour d'Ete' is the opposite season of the ideally tem perate French climate, the endless summer days of that bourgeois life

which was the subject matter of this radical art: the well-ordered peace of boating on the lake of the Bois de Boulogne, even so soon after the or deal of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870; the ducks are back to be fed, the shimmer of heat hovers over the water in zig-zag brush-strokes, the trees and lawns doze in the hazy distance, and ladies in boats always wear hats.

This painting was one which precip itated the negotiations for settlement of the Lane Collection dispute, when it

was deliberately stolen from the Nation

al Gallery in the 1950s by the then young student Paul Hogan, now and for many years past a pillar of respectability and of Ireland's Export Promotions Board, CTT. He did it to show how lax London was in safeguarding the pic tures. He had assembled a group of re porters on the front steps and walked out with the picture quite openly. His coup received world-wide publicity and high-lighted Dublin's case for at least having a loan of the paintings from time to time. (The Irish Times carried a car toon by NOK showing a Mafia-type gangster with the picture under his arm whispering "Psst! 'Jour D'Ete!' It's hot!").

The early Bonnard 'Boulevard de Clichy' (1911) all in blues and greys, and Boldini's handsome 1903 'Portrait of a Lady' are among the great paint ings frequently locked away, but Alfred

Stevens's amusing painting 'The Present', which is not, depicts a young woman in a prettily painted ribbon dress looking at a china tiger with a 'What on earth am I going to do with that?' expression on her face. 'The Present' is considered to be the best example of this Belgian painter's work.

Of the fourteen Mancinis belonging to the Gallery, most of them bequeath ed by Lane, only three are on view, in cluding the portrait of Sir Hugh him self. It is a considerable time since Sargent's portrait of Sir Hugh has been hung in the Gallery.

Charlemont House has, moreover, a superb collection of Irish painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen tury, only now beginning to be known and appreciated internationally. If the Gallery had pursued a normally active policy of exhibitions and catalogue pub lication, Irish art would have enjoyed a higher reputation before now and a wider public would have enjoyed Irish art. The Gallery possesses, for example, forty-four works by Sir John Lavery,

most of them portraits, but including the very popular boating scene 'Sutton

Courtenay'. Some of the portraits are leaden and uninspired, like the portrait of Arthur Griffith who, incidentally, was on the original Committee of Management of the 1908 Gallery; Sarah Purser's nearby portrait of Edward

Martyn is of far better quality, its lively surface contributing to the liveliness of the image. Some of the late Laverys are truly terrible paintings, such as Michael

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


Collins lying in state, but it should be remembered that as a young artist with

the 'Glasgow Boys', he was part of the European avant-garde of the time, invit ed to Vienna by the Vienna Secession,

4 a n d~~~~~n shown all over Europe before being shown in London. Lavery's best paint ings are of his beautiful wife, Hazel, like the glorious painting in the National

Gallery of Ireland which used to hang in the large ground floor gallery but

f | which has now been regrettably banish ed to lesser if more rational thematic quarters. Lavery's 'Mother and Child' in the Hugh Lane Gallery is even more be guiling, a very dark painting all in blacks and browns, with both Lady Lavery and her young daughter wearing deep black hats low over large eyes in pale pam pered faces. In spite of all the black tones, the painting is warm and luxur ious, quite a gorgeous work. In July of

this year at the Knocktoran, Co. Limerick, auction conducted by George Mealy and Sons of Castlecomer, two

landscapes by Lavery of Cap Ferrat and of Edinburgh fetched IR?37,000 and ?52,000 respectively.

William Leech, an excellent painter who has yet to reach the sales-room

popularity of Lavery, also had a talent

for pampered ladies: 'The Cigarette' is a delightful Bloomsburyish lady, languid and respectable and longing for sin. 'Girl with a Tinsel Scarf is the same

model, in closer focus, but with more

attention given to the technical mastery of her silver-embossed scarf. Leech is

__ E best known for his landscapes and his E well-known light-filled painting of nov

X~ W iices in a convent garden, but his own

small self-portrait standing diffidently by an open door is immeasurably touch ing in its reticence and very interesting in its spatial treatment.

The Municipal Gallery certainly has the best Walter Osborne, 'Tea in the

Garden', donated by Hugh Lane. This

large painting of women sitting at a

~~~~table drinking tea under big shady trees, g M * j , 4,_5-W-Ss with a dappled light falling on them, is

< 4~~ ionist painting produced by an Irish

s - ' s\$ it}t ' , ',, ti- Campbell's best efforts to assemble a f

tl t t; kA ^ ~~~~~body of Irish Impressionists last year at

_ ; *': ~~~-X.^ _ yrfi + ~~ the National Gallery. The other most ' _ f '' * ' ~~~~~~~popular Osborne of the thirty in the

7 _ -x ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~collection is 'The Fish Market, Patrick Azaleas, 1868, Albert Moore, 77" x 38", oil on canvas. Street', also donated by Sir Hugh Lane,

but not so interesting. -31



IRISH ARTS REVIEW


The great painter, William Orpen, is less well served in his native city's gallery, although the gallery possesses thirty-one of his works, mostly given or bequeathed by Hugh Lane. Most of the superb paintings of 1910 of summer on the Hill of Howth, full of a trans figuration light and an ecstatic sense of exaltation, quite different from his occasionally boring portraits, are no longer in Ireland. Again, he was best at painting women; his luminous full-length portrait of his mistress, Mrs St-George, 'Lady with a Jade Bangle', which is in

Manchester City Gallery, is a great painting in the lineage of Manet. By contrast, his 'China and Japan' is a silly still life, 'beautifully' painted in great detail with richly shiny surfaces, but he might as well have been painting 'The Flight of the Bumble-bee'. Orpen poss essed in abundance sheer professional skill, like some sort of virtuoso sur geon, or barrister, which only occasion ally broke through to high art.

The lesser-known Frank O'Meara, on the other hand, is a much quieter paint er, impelled, not by the urge to show off as Orpen was very wont to be, but by the inner compulsion of a personal vision. His five paintings in the elegiac 'October' series support each other with the consistency of their visual idea.

They are sad and autumnal but have a very definite character, sustained by a distinctively painted surface, working through a mild colour range and a mild, despondent mood. O'Meara lived mostly in France and died at the early age of thirty-five.

Nathaniel Hone the Younger, the landscape painter, presented four of his paintings to the Gallery and Sir Hugh Lane bequeathed a further four. While Constable, as I have said, is to my mind an over-rated artist, Hone on the other hand seems to me generally under-rated, and while he does not reproduce so well in popular editions, he is indeed a better landsQapist than Constable. Partly, I suppose, because he spent so much of his life in France where he did not need to earn his living by selling his work, after which he returned to a reclusive life in Ireland, by-passing the fashion able London scene where Orpen did so well, Hone has not been given the serious critical attention he deserves. His painting is quiet, although his muted palette is lively; the paint stands actively, even in a subject as un

The Cigarette Girl by W.i. Leech, 26" x 16?/2", oil on canvas.

promising as 'Grey Day at Malahide'. George Russell (AE) is also enjoying

new interest in his pre-Hollywood fairy paintings. No doubt they were an es cape from his heavy responsibilities as a philosopher and an enlightened agricul tural economist; as art, they are more of a shallow curiosity than the manifes tation of a great visual imagination.

There are twelve of them in the collection.

John Butler Yeats is a very much more substantial painter. He is more present and open-hearted in his por traits than Orpen is in his; he seems to pay more attention. One sometimes has the feeling that Orpen's mind was else

where while his eye and his hand worked for him with so much facility. Fourteen works by Yeats the Elder are in the Municipal Collection, including all the warm, vivid portraits of per sonalities from the Celtic Revival: his son, William B. as a young man, Douglas Hyde, W. G. Fay, Katherine Tynan Hinkson, Sir Horace Plunket, and John Millington Synge. I also seem to remember that many years ago there

was an interesting small painting by W.B. Yeats but it is no longer listed.

One of the most spectacular of the Irish paintings is 'There is no Night' by Jack B. Yeats, Yeats the Younger. This is Yeats at his peak, romantic, wild, no holds barred. Indeed many of the New Expressionist painters of the last decade, both inside and outside Ireland, must be impressed by this old man's passionate painting, the torn sky, the midnight light on the sea - the last light of

Europe as the earth turns - the dark purple land, the mythical white horse of poetic freedom, the free space of the painting, the wild freedom of the paint, the man reclining in the foreground turbulently dreaming and seeing it all.

The Gallery was lucky in that Roderic O'Conor presented two of his paintings 'A Breton Girl' (1903) in 1904, and his fine commanding self-portrait in 1947.

O'Conor's stunning painting 'Boulevard Raspail' was, however, purchased by the Gallery in 1981. Painted in 1907 when O'Conor and Munch were often neck and-neck in parallel preoccupations in painting, the deeply expressionist dark blue night sky and shadowy half-finished buildings are painted in vertical strokes which extend the night space upwards to mystical heights, while flowing hori zontal and diagonal strokes cover the ground of the building site in earth bound planes which, like Monet's snow-scene, act directly on the recept ive sensibilities with no barrier between the artist's intention and the viewer s experience.

Such could not be said of Millais's 'Lilacs', at least to this viewer, but obviously not to all, since this ludicrous painting of a sweet little girl with fair curls holding up a lapful of lilac blossom with heart-rending tears in her eyes, is one of the most popular paint ings in the gallery. Presented by Lord Iveagh, it is constantly being borrowed by foreign institutions, as indeed, are a number of other works, notably Burne Jones's 'Sleeping Princess', one of his most stylish large paintings; another divinely silly picture 'Venus' by R. Spencer Stanhope, showing the glam ourous grey-eyed sex-kitten-goddess, attended by putti, sporting a girdle of shells and modestly wrapped in her long auburn hair as she coyly emerges from the rocks and the pale green sea;

Whistler's rather poor painting of 'The Artist in his Studio', Monet's 'Waterloo Bridge' and Corot's 'Rome from the Pincio', Augustus John's large, rather

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


theatrical and blustery group which looks as if it might have been done for a theatre-curtain; this is only one of the fifteen works by John owned by the

Gallery, which also has one Gwen John painting 'Study of a Young Girl.' Norman Garstin's straight narrative painting, 'The Stranger', is also a popular request for borrowing by other galleries; it has quite interesting light ing - a dark foreground with the old tramp sitting scaring his young audience,

with a brightly lit sunny landscape and distant city behind him. Constable's 'The Elder Tree', 'Sutton Courtenay' by Lavery, 'Tea in the Garden' and 'The Fish Market' by Osborne, Harry Clarke's stained glass panel 'The Eve of St Agnes', Degas's 'Peasant Woman', Paul Henry's 'Lakeside Cottages' are also frequently requested and, of the con temporary works, Louis le Brocquy's 'Taiin' tapestry and Robert Ballagh's painting 'No. 3'.

Among the twentieth-century works in the Collection which are rarely seen by the public due to the storage space encroaching further and further upon the exhibition spaces, aggravated by the prolonged building work in both the old and new sections of the building, is a tiny vibrant painting of orchids, attrib uted to Picasso but not authenticated, and Rouault's 'Christ and the Soldier', the subject of a famous contretemps

when the City Councillors rejected the gift of the painting as being an offence against religion whereupon it was given asylum by St. Patrick's College, May nooth, the sanctum sanctorum of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland! The Councillors presumably repented of their sin against art, for the Rouault was eventually accepted for the Gallery. There are two very fine Klees, 'Meta morphose' and 'Anima Errante' in which his idea of 'taking a line for a walk' is clearly seen to relate closely to tradit ional Irish linear abstraction; two Albert

Gleizes poehoirs inscribed "for Evie Hone 1928"; a fine, small Baumeister 'Figurazione' (1945), again a linear composition of figures in reds and blues; a Roger Fry cubistic farmhouse in Sussex in browns and russets; a Guttuso in his strong, crude style, a study of roof-tops in grey, white and brown tiles

with a patch of bright yellow; a swift, romantic painting 'Spring with Machine

Age Noise' by the American painter, Morris Graves, who lived in Ireland for

several years in the late fifties and early sixties; one of Albers' squares within squares, of orange, light brown, ochre and grey, this abstract colour study still so expressive in its hand-painted straight lines; and Joseph Beuys's three black boards, relics of his visits to Dublin in 1974 and his illustrated seminars, electric with his extraordinary presence. The large, pale, abstract Agnes Martin painting, purchased from Rosc '80, is sometimes on view, its light pink and blue bands not so impeccably free from grubby finger marks as befits a profess ional gallery.

The Collection is thin in major twentieth-century art, and for some reason, the post-war Irish artists are very seldom shown, with the possible exception of Cecil King. Otherwise, the Le Brocquys, Scotts, Cookes, Collins, Bourkes, Reids, Farrells, Ballaghs, Maddens, Fromels, Kellys, and many others, languish unseen in the stores. The 'storage' itself is grossly inadequate.

With the huge labour force at Dublin Corporation's command, it surely should not be beyond possibility to second a carpenter to make proper storage racks for the paintings which now lie leaning

directly one against the other, with in evitable danger to canvases and frames.

Later acquisitions of sculpture fare a little better, perhaps because they are harder to store. Thus Nikki de Saint Phalle's cheerful 'Big Bird' adds bright colour and gay spirit to Rodin's 'Age of Bronze', and his marble portrait of George Bernard Shaw, Henry Moore's small 'Reclining Figure' (also rejected by the City Council at the same time as the Rouault), Arman's 'Cellomaster' and the Irish sculptor John Burke's 'Manhattan Slot'. But another Irish sculptor, Brian King's work 'Shift' which

won the main prize at the 1969 Paris Biennale, has sadly not been seen by the public for years; at present it is 'stored' in the basement of the Mansion House. Even Epstein's 'Lady Gregory' is put away, as is Degas's delicately stepping tiny race-horse which surely would in terest the horse-loving Irish public.

Rodin's 'Age of Bronze' was only his second exhibited work; the first, 'Man

with a Broken Nose' is in the Lane Collection. When first submitted to the Salon, 'Age of Bronze' gave rise to an extraordinary incident which is elabor ated in Note 2, taken from the 1908 catalogue.4

Another serious casualty of the lack of space, or the lack of a programme of changing exhibitions of the permanent collection - since no major gallery has sufficient space to show all of its works at any one time - is the very fine collection of drawings, prints, and water-colours which are not on view, including two beautiful water-colours by Rose Barton, the early twentieth century Irishwoman whose work is now greatly prized; one of her water-colours sold at auction in London this spring (1987) for?.25,000 and her'The Custom

House, Dublin, before the Rebellion' sold at the recent Knocktoran auction for the same price. Also not on view are a lovely drawing by Corot, 'The Seam stress'; a simple, accurate, study by

Millet for his famous painting 'The Gleaners', quite touching in its fresh ness and the tiny, observant detail of one woman's heel coming out of her shoe; also Millet's 'Bather' which

George Moore called "the adorable drawing"; Daumier's famous water colour 'In the Omnibus' which has been widely reproduced; twelve William Rothenstein drawings including a por trait of George Bernard Shaw, (one of

The Widow 1882 by Frank O'Meara, 60" x 40", oil on canvas.

-33



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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


the original subscribers to the Gallery) and two of William Butler Yeats; nine drawings by Alfred Stevens, and eight by Augustus John which are often more direct and less bombastic than his paintings; Christo's collage/drawing of his project for Dublin, for Rosc '77, the 'Wrapped Walkways' which was refused

permission by the Office of Public Works and was subsequently welcomed by Kansas city - so much for Dublin's standing as an art-loving European capital. Most heart-breaking of all, there are two prints by Matisse, never seen, one of which the Curator thinks may be a drawing. They were donated in 1938 by the Friends of the National Collection.

The stained glass room has also gone. Harry Clarke's Geneva window, design ed for the League of Nations, was on loan to the Gallery from the Clarke family for six years without being shown, after which, understandably, they withdrew it and it is going for sale in London in November 1987, along

with all the remaining full-scale car toons in the family's possession.

The outstanding work by Irish artists in the medium of stained glass is thus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ M, ONI

Studies of a Child's Head by Augustus John. 11" x 8?"/2", crayon drawing.

denied to the public, although the great work is in the churches where it is avail able to be seen; nevertheless, as a token of appreciation of the importance of

that work, it was entirely fitting that small individual pieces by Evie Hone, Harry Clarke and Michael Healy should have been on view in the city's art gallery. Tapestry is another medium which has entirely vanished from the walls: major twentieth-century pieces like Lurcat's 'Coq Guerrier' and Le

Brocquy's 'Taiin' are more or less per manently rolled up, and mixed media work like James Coleman's poetic 'Clara and Dario', acquired by the

Gallery in 1986, looks as if it may never see the light of the public day for the foreseeable future.

It is easy to feel depressed about the fate of an institution which started life as a result of the immense faith and vitality of Sir Hugh Lane, a man who was passionate about art. The Gallery now needs his passion - passion in its direction and administration, passion in the political will of the City of Dublin, its Lord Mayor and its City Councillors to rescue it in time for the celebration of Dublin's millenium in 1988, from the lethargy in which it is slumped.

Dorothy Walker

_NOTES_

1. It was the first public gallery established

exclusively for the exhibition of modern Art in Ireland and Great Britain.

2. 'Prefatory Notice' by Hugh P. Lane to the

Illustrated Catalogue of the Municipal Gallery

of Modem Art, 17 Harcourt Street, published in Dublin 1908, by Dollard Printing House,

Dublin, Limited.

3. A charming painting, 'Sand Dunes', by Eva

Gonzalez hangs in the National Gallery, Dublin.

4. Illustrated Catalogue, op. cit., Appendix, Note

II. "In 1876 The man with a Broken Nose' was admitted to the Salon. This determined

Rodin to send in his statue The Age of

Bronze' and this gave rise to an incident the

very injustice of which was to bring him into

notice. The jury (hanging Committee of the

Salon) astonished by this work, admitted it, but accused the artist of having taken a cast

from life, so perfect was the modelling... Rodin protested. He had had a Belgian soldier

for his model in Brussels. He had photographs taken of him and sent to the jury, who did not even open the packet and persisted in the

allegations. Three sculptors, however,

protested in his favour ... ; some critics spoke of the affair, and Rodin's work made so much

impression that the Secretary of the Fine Arts,

Turquet, bought The Age of Bronze.' 'Rodin

waited till 1880 to exhibit "St John the

Baptist." Meanwhile Turquet had conceived a

friendship for him and wished to wipe out the

unjust accusation brought against The Age of

Bronze'. The Inspectors of the Fine Arts

Department disowned the purchase of that

work and declared it cast from life. Rodin,

discouraged, remained silent; a chance saved

him.... He chanced to be executing a group of children in a composition for the sculptor Boucher ... Boucher saw him improvise the

group in a few hours, and went, thunder

struck, to tell some of his friends. He had the

honesty to declare that such a man, having done this before his own eyes, was capable of

making The Age of Bronze.' Seven other

artists, sculptors and painters, insisted loyally, and Rodin's cause was won." (Georges

Mauclair).

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