Art lovers select their favourite Crawford Gallery piece
If art is a drug, then Seán Keating’s Men of the South was my gateway to the highly addictive world of the visual arts.
As a teenager I found myself drawn to this picture not as a piece of art, but rather, I was captivated by the narrative possibilities it offered.
1921 Truce. Sean Moylan led an armed column 2nd North Cork IRA to Sean Keating's studio in Dublin - Men Of The South. pic.twitter.com/7deHU3bBlv
— Cónal Creedon (@ConalCreedon) December 17, 2014
Like a movie poster for a Saturday matinee western, this painting opened a portal to this boy’s imagination, I would stand in the gallery lost in the detail of Keating’s brush strokes, intrigued by what might happen next.
Yet this is not an action-packed, comic-book representation of guerrilla warfare. It is a study of stoical silence and the deep personal contemplation of ordinary men about to face an extraordinary situation.
The genesis of this painting presents a fascinating anecdote: during the delicate days of the truce, which called a cessation of the spiralling violence of the Black and Tan war.
Keating asked Seán Moylan if he and his IRA Flying Column would sit for a portrait. Moylan agreed, and so, in autumn 1921 an armed column of the North Cork Brigade travelled to Dublin to Keating’s studio at the Metropolitan School of Art, Kildare Street. In Keating’s memoir of 1951, he humorously relates the consternation caused when this armed body of men arrived into Kildare Street during that time of fragile peace.
Almost every day of my childhood I’d pass, without much interest, a plaque announcing a tiny cottage at the bottom of Water Lane was the birthplace of James Barry, the painter.
Then, I must have been 12 or 13, I found myself one afternoon exploring the Crawford Gallery, keeping a wary eye out for the porter.
Facing me at the top of the staircase was Barry’s portrait of himself and Edmund Burke.
I stared at Barry, stared in wonder at the bold Cork face of him, saw him as a neighbour’s child.
Nothing was ever the same after.
J. Barry, Portraits of Barry and Burke in the Characters of Ulysses and companion, Fleeing the cave of Polyphemus, is SUCH A CATCHY TITLE
— Ruth Ni Leannachain (@RuthLeannachain) February 9, 2013
At 2.36 metres in height, made of steel and bronze, my favourite art work from the Crawford Collection, sits literally outside the gallery doors. Vivienne Roche’s Viapori Bell (1991) occupies its space just to the right of the entrance.
Standing there calmly, it bears witness to the daily life of the gallery. Imagine it as a sort of stoic guardian and weathered observer of the gallery and its audiences. It’s in a perfect position as it interacts with the architecture of the entrance and invites us to pause.
Bells play a significant and symbolic role in our lives, from the announcement of the beginnings or the end of something, to the arrival or departure of someone, to simply cautioning us of possible hazards (think bicycles). We are now more accustomed to hearing digital bell sounds, so next time you are passing step to the right and give Viapoiri Bell a sounding as you pass. It’s a beautiful work that makes a rich sound.
Walking in the Crawford, my feet often halted in front of Paul Henry’s Landscape, which always struck me as more of a ‘skyscape’ than anything else. A good two-thirds of the frame billows with the abstract forms of full white clouds. It’s as if this less than experimental work is yearning towards the end of figurative painting; as if, within the confines of landscape, Henry is pushing skyward, into the great blue yonder of abstraction; while remaining rooted in the down-to-earth bogland of a painted mountain scene.
Henry’s vision is onto the eternal presence of wilderness, with no human subject present, whose dress might locate the scene in time. It is this eternal element that has always attracted me to it. Those blue mountains have always beckoned from a distance, and always will. For me, there are also the memories of growing up in Galway, with this West of Ireland landscape close at hand.
Snap Apple Night is a riot of character and gesture, of history and vernacular architecture.
Maclise was one of the best Cork artists of the 19th century, hugely popular in London society.
Part of his success was his dramatic visual sense, his love of the theatrical and the medieval.
Most lovers of art in Ireland will know him from his gigantic painting of the marriage of Strongbow and Aoife in the National Gallery, but I love Maclise for his smaller achievements, his miniaturist details and his technical showing-off.
Snap Apple Night must be one of the earliest depictions of Irish music in art, showing the flute, fiddle and tambourine/bodhrán, as well as Irish dancers in full swing.
It depicts an evening organised by Fr Matthew Horgan of Blarney in 1832 and contains an image of both the fun-loving parish priest and of Thomas Crofton-Croker, the early folklorist.
It is a rare picture of Irish life from a world that was dominated by classical themes and neo-classical impulses.
Inspired by a Halloween party in Blarney, Irish artist Daniel Maclise painted Snap-Apple Night in 1833. pic.twitter.com/xvRHeBeVSu
— HeARTβeατ (@HeartbeatGall) October 29, 2014
Snap Apple Night is worth looking at again and again, for the details of the fireside, the sheen of black hair, as well as the things hidden in the rafters. Everything here has Maclise’s fluency and mischief.
My favorite work at the Crawford would be the exquisite stained glass windows and sketches of Irish symbolist artist Harry Clarke.
I visited these as a child and they stood out as magical and unique: inspired by great plays, fairytales and legends he created a fantastical, strange and wonderful world of ethereal images.
These works show how incredible he was as a stained glass artist but also as a storyteller painter in bringing the poem to life.
Mainie Jellett’s Abstract Composition is not so abstract.
A mere glance shows it is an interpretation of the Holy Family.
It is worth a visit just to enjoy the beauty and harmony of this single work, so modern in its execution yet so deeply influenced by the world of medieval painting, Celtic art and icon-making.
The painting is serene, dynamic and warm, permanently inviting the viewer to engage with the community of three in that world of light, life and unity.
Given the revolutionary path taken by Jellett during her short lifetime (1897-1944) in the single-minded pursuit of her art, she might in the 21st century be all-too-easily dismissed as a mere ‘religious’ artist.
But this work transcends religious and cultural boundaries. Looking at Abstract Composition, I often admire her life-long defiance of convention and her courage in taking her own artistic path to Paris to study with André Lehote and Albert Gleizes. Jellett, learning a great deal about cubism in Paris, followed her own path when she returned to Dublin, an artistic suburb of London.
Jellett died in her artistic prime on February 16, 1944. During her final illness, a friend gave her particular pleasure by recounting what a child had recently said of her: “I learn drawing from school. I learn art from Miss Jellett.”
Standing in front of Abstract Composition, I enjoy it all the more because I know that I — like many people of my generation — ‘learned art from Miss Jellett.’
What a superb, courageous teacher! What a privilege to have her works in the Crawford.
Looking closely at Abstract Composition on a rainy afternoon in Cork, I see clearly how fluidly painted Abstract Composition is.
I am drawn to irregularities of the brush strokes, and the feeling that all these colour choices have been slowly found.
I warm to the time captured in these decisions.
This is much more than a colour study with an underlayer of religious iconography; it is a steady-minded amalgam of cubist manners, and eastern spirituality, becoming something other.
The dynamic and compositional sophistication is, for me, epitomised by the strong diagonal line leaning to the right which divides a collection of softer, tonally similar earthy colours to the right, while at the same time releasing higher contrast colour relationships to the left.
The painting lifts into an active, continual embedded motion, a living network of relations, modestly presenting itself since 1935, when the painting was completed.
Such an achievement is part of the bedrock on which I practise as an artist.
This little gem of a painting was donated to the state from the AIB Art Collection early in 2012 — and not long afterward, transferred to the Crawford Gallery.
I guess we could get distracted by thinking about the legacy of Nama and the country’s financial meltdown.
But in ways, Osborne’s painting is a reminder that some things in life are more important — such as our sense of history or a need to simplify our busy lives.
And what could be simpler than the scene portrayed in A November Morning from 1888?
This oil on board, while perhaps a tad sentimental for us today, captures the innocence of three boys ambling down an autumnal lane.
But I love this painting simply because Osborne was such an accomplished painter.
Here, he captures the diffuse light that softly illuminates the scene so effortlessly with brushwork that must be the envy of many artists.
And let’s not forget; Osborne didn’t have a camera phone to whip out to use as a colour study.
Maybe it’s because this was filmed less than 100m from my house in Cork, or maybe it’s because I’m working on an opera about nuns, but Tacita Dean’s elegy to the nuns of Evergreen Street has remained with me ever since I encountered it almost 10 years ago.
It’s a poem in celluloid — lasting an hour, in reference to The Book of Hours —which shows the last five women to live in the convent going about their daily lives, at work, rest and prayer.
Dean’s art often deals with obsolescence, with things that will soon be no longer, including the medium of film itself – but these images and lives she has captured remain in light and in motion through the continued existence of the artwork.
That such a significant artist was commissioned to make this work in Cork, that it has been seen all over the world, and that it was acquired by the Crawford as part of the collection is one of the most enduring legacies of Cork’s year as European City of Culture in 2005.
I hope it’s exhibited again soon.
It is not certain who, sometime around 1750, painted this View of Cork, showing the city as seen from a height above the river Lee.
Irrespective of who the artist was, the painting itself is a treasure, providing a visual record of the city at a time when it was enjoying the fruits of prosperity from maritime trade.
Staples such as beef, butter and horses were being exported, while there was a great demand for imported luxuries such as sugar, wine, textiles and mahogany.
Many of the close-packed houses would have been warehouses, built with their gable fronts facing the river.
In these years, streets and houses were extending onto what had previously been marshland, downstream from the medieval city.
The painting is a social record, showing the houses of wealthy merchants and also the simpler cottages around Shandon.
Some famous landmark buildings appear, including the (now) Crawford Art Gallery, originally a custom house built in 1724, shown facing a small dock on the river.
The artist has cleverly created a panorama where two views of the city, one looking south and one looking west, are blended into one seamless view.
This fine work of art, donated to the Crawford by the McCarthy family, can be seen in the gallery’s 18th century room on the first floor, and is worth a visit.
- Three Centuries of Irish Art contains over 120 works and texts from the Crawford Art Gallery’s collection. The book is available at the Crawford for €37. crawfordartgallery.ie
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