A true servant of the arts

In one of his last published pieces, Séamus Heaney recalled his friendship with the art critic Dorothy Walker, currently the subject of an exhibition in Dublin.

Dorothy Walker was good at everything. Art criticism. Cooking. Curating. Welcoming. Conversing. Her brio was infectious, her physical and intellectual stamina seemingly inexhaustible, her courage in defence of the standards she believed in unshakeable.

Those standards were not only aesthetic; she had what the Renaissance called ‘sprezzatura’, an ethic of lightness in even the most serious of situations. This appeared most compellingly in her bright, brave demeanour in the face of death, during the long period she had to spend in hospital. But it was also there in her punctilio as cook and hostess in her own house: the way she could roast and carve a goose or a couple of pheasants for a round table crowded with family and lucky guests, all the while giving vent to praise and dispraise in relation to current exhibitions and reputations.

On such occasions her architect husband Robin was always present and often one or two of her gifted family. The conversation was quick and convivial, the house — designed by Robin — a modernist statement, very much a case of the Walkers making a home that reflected the values they espoused.

For Dorothy as critic, those values were fervently Irish but not in a xenophobic way. Her awareness was as international as it was national, something which was manifest in her connection with the historically important Rosc exhibitions of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. These showed classic modern and contemporary work by artists from Europe and America, the likes of de Kooning and Bacon early on, Christo and Kiefer later. In the end, the catalogues of the work displayed amounted to a who-was-who in the field.

Dorothy’s enthusiasm carried her into the business of organisation as well as straight art criticism. Not only was she a member of the committee that got together the first Rosc, she lobbied for an Irish Museum of Modern Art and when it was established, she was actively associated with it. She was a shaker and mover in the campaign to bring Irish art abreast of the times, and the material in her archive is evidence of her constancy in pursuit of this end.

She was sustained in these endeavours by Robin and the circle of friends she gathered round her. Robin was a partner in the firm with Michael Scott, the doyen of Irish architects at the time and a man central to the realisation of the Rosc project. There was an energy and conviction about their cultural purpose, all the more credible because of the artists who were their friends.

From the start, there was Patrick Scott and Louis le Brocquy, Anne Madden and Camille Souter and later Hughie O’Donoghue and Sean Scully, Kathy Prendergast and Éilis O’Connell. But these are a few names more or less at random: the important thing was the existence of a community of like-minded creative spirits who brought sustenance and challenge to each other individually. There was also a sense of a movement going forward, bigger than any one artist, a movement to which Dorothy had much to contribute.

Dorothy’s book, Modern Art in Ireland, published in 1997, is a history of this confidence as it developed in artists of different generations, with a decided emphasis on the word ‘modern’ that appears in her title. The academicians would have to look for a different champion: as I said in the book’s foreword at the time, her record “permits itself opinion (prejudice even), but keeps the tone brisk and the information coming”.

In the summer, the Walker family would retire to their magical house at Bóthar Bui on the Beara Peninsula, a kind of latter day Coole Park with Dorothy presiding.

And what Yeats wrote about the artists and writers welcomed by Lady Gregory could also apply to those who were guests of the Lady of Bóthar Buí:

“They came like swallows and like swallows went/And yet a woman’s powerful character/ Could keep a swallow to its first intent.”

It was a joy and a confirmation to have been a friend of Dorothy Walker. To have her archive catalogued and on display is a timely benefit for scholars and for the rest of us an opportunity to admire a life of passionate service to the arts.

* Dorothy Walker (1929 — 2002) is the subject of the exhibition More Adventurous Thinking, at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin until Sept 20. Walker was one of the most prominent Irish art critics of her day. The exhibition draws on her personal archive, now in the collection of the National Irish Visual Arts Library