In relation to the image viewed give your initial response to these questions

•What is it? •Where is it?

•Who is in the image?• When?

•Who with?•What with?

In relation to the image viewed give your initial response to these questions

• Is it good/bad? Why ? Why Not• How good/bad?• Is it original?• Does it Work? Why? Why Not?• Where Does it come from?• What impact does it have on you?( how does

it make you feel?)

Further Questioning

• How? What for?• Meaning what?• What response?• What then?

• Who says? Why so?• What else was going on?• Who saw it differently?

• How else?

“A Family” By Louis le Brocquy ,1951

Information on “A Family”

• A Family is a key work in the development of the artist's career and signals his early creativity in relation to theme and style.

• It is one of a series of family paintings marking a change in Le Brocquy's palette from the comparatively colourful work of the 1940s to predominantly greys, black and white- later referred to as his Grey Period. The human presence continues to be depicted but the images have become starker than in the earlier work.

Information on “A Family”

• According to the artist, the painting was conceived in 1950 in the face of the atomic threat, social upheaval and refugees of World War II and its aftermath.

• Le Brocquy says 'it was painted while contemplating a human condition stripped back to paleolithic circumstance under the electric light bulbs'. The painting won the Prealpina Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1956.

• The composition owes much to Cubism in its shallow treatment of space, the limited palette and the simplified forms.

• A Family is counted among the artist's so-called 'Grey' paintings, distinguished by their restricted palette and melancholic tone.

• Painted in London, where le Brocquy had settled in 1946, the picture was conceived against a backdrop of nuclear threat, widespread social upheaval and the vast refugee crisis that followed the Second World War.

• Le Brocquy challenges conventional perceptions of the family, presenting a group characterized by the separateness of its members.

• When the National Gallery of Ireland acquired Louis le Brocquy's canvas A Family, in 2002, he became the first living Irish artist to have a painting in the collection.

• It is a modern parable. Le Brocquy, who has died aged 95, painted A Family in 1951. In 1952 a group of patrons offered to buy the painting for £400 and present it to the municipal gallery in Dublin, but the art advisory committee rejected it as incompetent.

• Four years later, it won a prize at the Venice Biennale, was bought by the Nestlé Foundation and hung at its Milan headquarters until 2001.

• The Irish businessman Lochlann Quinn then bought it from Agnews in London for £1.7m, and with his wife, Brenda, presented it to the National Gallery of Ireland.

Louis le Brocquy

Louis le Brocquy• Louis le Brocquy, a self-taught artist, is undoubtedly

one Ireland's most celebrated artists. He has exhibited and is represented in major public collections worldwide.

• He is perhaps best known for his series of heads, influenced in their representation by the Celtic concept of the head as a magic box containing the spirit

• Renowned for his book illustrations such as The Tain by Thomas Kinsella, and as a designer of tapestries, one of which hangs in the Gallery's Millennium Wing.

(National Gallery of Ireland: Essential Guide, 2008)

Video; “Behind the painting”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCYv0aXO27o

Louis le Brocquy rememberedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcknyeCdkLg

Other works

Samuel Beckett

James Joyce

Image of renowned Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), 1975, oil on canvas, painted by the artist, Louis le

Brocquy

Self Portrait

Bono

Bono and Louis

• 'A gigantic tapestry with a sea of rainbow teardrops hangs to the side, like the building's personally tailored dream coat'.

• 'The new Millenium Wing of the National Gallery of Ireland has been praised for its cool elegance. The buffed, plain walls are considerably enlivened by a magnificent tapestry designed by Louis le Brocquy'.

• A tapestry by Louis le Brocquy entitled The Triumph of

Cúchulainn, was unveiled in the new Millennium wing of the National Gallery of Ireland, on the occasion of the opening of the the new 4,000 sq meter wing, designed by award winning architects Benson & Forsyth (Royal Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh).

The Triumph of Cúchulainn

The Triumph of Cúchulainn• Visitors to the Millennium Wing walk in through double doors into an

orientation court at entrance level. The décor is solid stone and naturally rendered plaster and from the moment you step inside, the eye is drawn upwards to the natural light, which pervades the upper levels. A note of colour is added by the striking tapestry, The Triumph of Cúchulainn by Louis le Brocquy.

• The It is installed in the reception lobby of the building and hangs from a total height of 14 metres by the modern means of velcro. It represents some 37 sq metres and was woven in the historical region of Aubusson, France .

• It is the largest single work designed by the artist to date and took some 3400 hours to complete involving four weavers for five months.