The day Louis le Brocquy praised my artwork

Arts Editor Marc O’Sullivan met the late artist a few years ago and discovered to his delight that they shared a mutual admiration for each other’s work

Michael Garvey’s documentary on Louis le Brocquy, An Other Way of Knowing, first screened on RTÉ in November 1986.

I knew le Brocquy’s work, but was not aware until then that he had any connection with the Beara peninsula in West Cork.

In the film, le Brocquy is shown at his holiday home outside Ardgroom with a number of drawings of a cave at a place known locally as Cuas. These, he explained, gave him the basis of Samuel Beckett’s mouth in his famous portraits of the writer.

I was astonished. I knew Cuas; it was just a few miles from my own family home in Eyeries. It seemed unbelievable that the cave there would now have this connection with my favourite author and playwright.

Several years later, I was involved in mounting an Artists in Beara exhibition at the Beara Community School in Castletownbere. We included le Brocquy’s work, borrowing two of his watercolours of local scenes from his caretaker, James Leahy. I had hoped I might meet le Brocquy at the opening, a joyous evening attended by hundreds. But on that occasion I was disappointed: le Brocquy didn’t show.

My own experiments in painting were winning me some notoriety at that time. Not that I was ever an artist: no, I earned my crust as a house painter, and had taken to painting every house in Eyeries a different colour. Pink and purple and yellow jostled with green and blue and red. I was young, and must have been persuasive: my neighbours let me paint their homes every colour in the rainbow.

Years later, having put my back out, I embarked on a new career as an art critic. In 2005, I finally got the opportunity to interview le Brocquy on the occasion of an exhibition of his Tain prints at the Peppercanister Gallery in Dublin.

Le Brocquy invited me to meet him at his home in Dublin. I hadn’t expected him to open his own front door. But when I rang the bell, there he was: the greatest living Irish artist of the 20th century, asking me in. It was one of those rare occasions when I was star-struck.

Our interview lasted barely a minute. Le Brocquy answered a few questions about his Tain illustrations, but declined to expand any further. When he signalled the interview was over, I gathered up my things and made to leave.

Le Brocquy seemed surprised. “Won’t you stay for a coffee?” he asked.

Once my tape recorder was turned off and put away, le Brocquy grew more talkative. When I told him I was from Eyeries, he seemed delighted. He asked what I had worked at there: fishing, perhaps?

I explained that I had been a house painter. Le Brocquy lit up at once. “Really? Don’t tell me you painted all those houses?” he asked.

I put my hands up. “That was me.”

“But they’re beautiful!” he said. “I’ve always been enthralled by your handiwork.” He leaned across and shook my hand. “My God! I’ve so honoured to have met you!”