Samuel Forde reborn at Crawford Art Gallery
SAMUEL Forde’s painting Fall of the Rebel Angels was unfinished when he died in 1826, aged 23. But the work so captivated academics Michael Waldron and Dr Shane Lordan, at the Crawford Art Gallery in August, 2012, that they researched Forde and have mounted an exhibition about him.
Lordan and Waldron lecture in UCC, in history and English, respectively, but neither had investigated art of the early 19th century. “What we wanted this exhibition to be about was not just the art,” says Lordan, “but about the objects as well, because Forde was a working artist. He worked so hard, and his tools, his materials, what he physically worked with, are of as much interest to us as the scenes he was trying to depict.”
Fall of the Rebel Angels is hung among the Crawford’s Canova Casts, which arrived in Cork in 1818 and were originally exhibited in the Apollo Theatre, on the corner of what is now Opera Lane. Forde was one of the first pupils of Cork School of Art. “One of the reasons for this exhibition is to show the impact these casts had on even the first students — who were an extraordinary generation. Forde was regarded as probably the better of Daniel Maclise and John Hogan. Maclise went on to become the favourite of Victoria and Albert, and Hogan went on to be the great Irish sculptor in Rome. They had big careers and Forde would have probably had the same.”
DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: #FREE guided tour of the @Samuel_Forde exhibition on 13 March at 18.30..last free tour of the series! #art #cork
— Crawford Art Gallery (@CrawfordArtGall) February 26, 2014
Forde had a short life, dying of TB, but he packed in an incredible career. At 13, he enrolled in Cork School of Art; he was teaching at 16; and by the time he was 20 he was the drawing master of The Mechanics Institute, also situated in the Apollo Theatre.
Cork was upwardly mobile, due to the affluent merchant class, resulting in a surge in education and interest in the arts. Forde’s work had literary influences and he was extensively educated, although he was not upper class. He worked as a set designer and drawing teacher to support his mother and sister, while painting by night.
Waldron and Lordan read Forde’s diaries, and received archives and notes from the Crawford Art Gallery’s director, Peter Murray. Lordan recalls Forde’s sense of humour in a journal entry. Forde was working on a series of reliefs: “There’s a very telling line when he is coming to the end of the project, and he says ‘Need I say, a relief to me!’.”
Forde inspired generosity. “There’s a very strong sense of civic pride and philanthropy in 19th century Cork,” says Lordan. In the latter days of his TB, Forde was invited to work on his painting in Tivoli House, home of James Morgan, but he died before he could. Waldron and Lordan have revived interest in Forde’s career. They have a blog, logging each new discovery about him. ‘Forde’ has a twitter account, where ‘he’ chats to his public. Waldron and Lordan have one remaining goal. “What we want to do, after this exhibition, is establish a permanent marker to the artist,” says Waldron. “To say he did have an impact on the city and its cultural life.”
Forde was held in high estimation by Maclise and Hogan. Maclise sent letters from London, hoping to lure him from his native Cork City. Forde only ventured as far as Skibbereen, where three of his paintings were commissioned for the cathedral. Crucifixion for Skibbereen was moved to St Barrahane’s church, Castlehaven, in the 1840s.
Fall of the Rebel Angels was very nearly lost. The Crawford Art Gallery found it in 1997, when clearing out a store room in preparation for the building of a wing. “It took two years to restore,” says Waldron, “but it was saved from the very cusp of being lost forever. It’s usually framed, but we decided to show it unframed, so you can see the edges and how threadbare and damaged it was.”
Lordan has identified the sophistication in Forde’s subject matter. “My area is medieval studies, particularly the early Church and the Bible, so the fall of the rebel angels from heaven is always something that interested me as a theme or idea that medieval writers look at. It’s a very important concept within early European thought.”
“Forde’s source for Fall of the Rebel Angels seems to be ‘Book One’ of John Milton’s Paradise Lost,” says Waldron. “A very popular and famous book at the time. Other artists were drawing on it for various themes, but Forde manages to be quite original. He succeeds in imagining what it is for these rebel angels to be cast out of heaven. Some people might challenge us on this, but I think you can quite rightly say that it is one of the finest works that’s ever been produced in the city. And to know it was produced here in Cork, I think the people of Cork and the people of Ireland should be rightfully very proud of this artist.”
* Follow Samuel Forde on twitter: @Samuel_Forde Samuel Forde — Visions of Tragedy runs in Crawford Art Gallery until March 22.
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