Irish Arts Review

PORTRAITS &PEOPLE: ART IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY IRELANDIrish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 28, No. 1 (SPRING (MARCH - MAY 2011)), p. 142Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41206300 .

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SPRING 201 1

CATALOGUES

PASSION AND POLITICS, SIR JOHN LAVERY: THE SALON REVISITED DUBLIN CITY GALLERY THE HUGH LANE. DUBLIN. 2010 PP. 128 FULLY ILLUSTRATED P/B €17.99 ISBN: 978-1-901702-35-4

The first thing to say about this catalogue is that it has a detailed, and extremely well-written text by Sinéad McCoole (who was also the author of a biography of Lady Lavery) , though it is one which is more interested in history as background than in

history as an illumination for art. There are

two key questions, the first being whether

Lavery s historical work was any good as art (not answered - in my view not), and the second being how far his 'Irish' and

'political' work was self-serving. There are intimations in the text that it was, and the answer I would suggest lies in the work itself which is half-hearted and often

surprisingly badly painted. However, his wife clearly saw it as a route to both

money and social cachet. The catalogue is well produced, has a list of works cross- referenced to the illustrations, and is well worth buying.

GABRIEL METSU NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND. DUBLIN. 2010 PP. 210. OVER 40 COL ILLS P/B €29.95 ISBN: 978-1-904288-41-1

Let's give credit where it is due. This exhibition /catalogue was initiated by the National Gallery's Adriaan Waiboer whose dissertation and forthcoming monograph supply the basis for it. It has been done in

conjunction with the Rijksmuseum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and it is a real pleasure to say that the job has been done properly. There's not a

single dud amongst the eight essays which

supply a wide range of contexts for

U2 IRISH ARTS REVIEW I SPRING 2011

Metsu's art. The bibliography is exemplary, the list of works is cross-referenced, and the production values are excellent. I would have to say that even after seeing the exhibition I have difficulty in seeing Metsu as anything other than a very minor 1 7th-century Dutch artist, but that said the art-historical apparatus martialled here is

impressive in its thoroughness: you will learn a lot about everything from Metsu's

painting technique to his relationship with

Vermeer. Well worth buying, especially if

you are even remotely interested in Dutch 1 7th-century art.

ART BEYOND ULSTER GOLDEN THREAD GALLERY. BELFAST. 2010 PP. 48 18 COL ILLS H/B £10.00/€12.00 ISBN: 978-0-9557469-9-4

This is the seventh in the series of the Golden Thread's Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art and its theme, that of the influence of international travel on Northern Irish artists, is an important one. The exhibition, curated by Brian Kennedy (who also wrote one of the texts) focuses on artists from the British School of Rome to which Northern Irish artists have been

going since 1978. Both texts - the other is a history of the School of Rome in relation to the Northern Irish Arts Council

by Brian Ferran - have a strong personal flavour. The theme is intriguing, especially as Brian Kennedy is one of our great wandering artist-diplomats, continually bringing back contacts into the North but it is a pity that two other areas are not addressed: firstly the importance of the School of Rome in relation to a raft of other artist travellers (one thinks of Alistair McLennan 's globetrotting, or

Gerry Gleason in Poland and Germany) or other residencies such as the PS1 in New York; and secondly some discussion as to whether such residencies actually strongly registered on the work of the individual artists.

PORTRAITS & PEOPLE: ART IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND CRAWFORD ART GALLERY. CORK. 2010 PP. 148 FULLY ILLUSTRATED P/B €15.00 ISBN: 978-1-874756-08-8

I was looking forward to this catalogue as the territory is a murky one in Irish art

history. What we have are forty portraits, seemingly well reproduced (though the details are often tonally different from the main image) , each with a text, along with four essays and a preface. The preface tells us that the aim was 'an insight into people who lived in Ireland four centuries ago' with the emphasis on 'the details of

everyday life', a point flatly contradicted

by Peter Murray's introduction (utilising information from excellent essays by Karen Hearn and Elizabeth Wincott

Heckett) which informs us that the

portraits were of people 'as they wished to be seen', and so had a strong fantasy element. The title itself is a misnomer as a

very large number of these portraits were

painted by non-Irish artists in London, and many of the identifications are

putative. As provenances are scarce, just how many of these portraits were actually in Ireland for any length of time in the 1 7th century is a moot point. There is much use of 'said to be attributed to' and so forth, and a large number of the entries are essentially lengthy genealogies with little on the art, though Dr Jane Fenlon's entries are a noted exception to this. This was a great idea as both an exhibition and a catalogue but it rather lacks rigour. The

catalogue is repetitive, the same information often being repeated three times, the proofing is surprisingly poor and there is no list of illustrations, no index and no bibliography (though the

essays are footnoted). ■

BRIAN McAVERA is an art critic.

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