21St Century Irish Paintings, 26Th November –6Th December,2003, 37, No
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83770 Gorry Gallery Catalogue 16/05/2011 16:50 Page 1 GORRY GALLERY requeststhe pleasure of yourcompanyatthe privateviewof An Exhibition of 18th -21st Century IrishPaintings and Antique Prints courtesyofCaxton on Sunday 29thMay 2011 Wine 3o’clock This exhibitioncan be viewed prior to theopening by appointment also Wednesday 25th-Friday 27thMay 11.30 a.m.-5.30 p.m. andSaturday 28thMay 2-5p.m. andat www.gorrygallery.ie Kindly note that allpaintingsinthisexhibitionare forsalefrom3.00 p.m. 29th May-11th June2011 83770 Gorry Gallery Catalogue 16/05/2011 16:51 Page 2 27. ALOYSIUS O’KELLY1853 -1936 ‘L’auberge’ Oiloncanvas 76.7 x96.5 Signed and dated lower right: Aloysius O’Kelly,1909 Exh: Probably Paris Salon, no. 1366, 1909 Lit: NiamhO’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly:Art,Nation, Empire (Dublin, 2010); Julian Campbell, TheIrish Impressionists (Dublin, 1984). nBrittany,according to the celebrated American to Brittanywereeitherunconscious of,orresistant to the Iwriter,EdgarL.Wakemanin1890, thereare ‘3,000,000 modernisation in progress, and continued to focus on people morepeculiar and interesting than can be found the picturesque costumes,poverty,superstitiousrituals in any equal space of Europe’. Having gone to Brittany and strange religiouscustoms that they continued to after ayear in Ireland, Wakemanfeltqualifiedtoobserve ‘see’. Theartist’sarguedthat they weredocumentingthe that ‘in language, thought,mannerand everyday life, ‘quaint’ lives of the Bretons before they were Breton folk arelessFrench todaythan Irishmen in extinguished by modern ‘progress’. Critical theory, Ireland areEnglish’. He wentontodescribe apeople however,wouldnow argue arelationship of power, whowere‘self-contained, self-sustained,isolated’, explaining that artists,throughthe act of representation, wherethe ‘women and men alike arebeasts of burden. assumed adominant position over those depicted as All refuse and resentinnovation’.1 primitive. But from the late 1870s,Brittany becameone of the most Whether the term ‘primitive’ is usedtosignify productive regions in France, having been among the (patronisingly) alack of civilisation, or (romantically) a poorestinthe midcentury.Therewas ahugegrowth in simplicity in the faceofthe over-civilisation of western agricultureand fishing, as well as population, especially societies,itstereotypes thosedepicted. O’Kelly, in the southofthe peninsula wherethe artists however,evinced an empathy that the more standard concentrated. But therewas also aconsiderable time lag attitude lacked. He wasone of the first Irish artiststo in representations of the region. The artist’swho flocked 2 83770 Gorry Gallery Catalogue 16/05/2011 16:51 Page 3 discover Brittany in the 1870s and wasinfluential in were several hotels,includingthe Pension Gloanec – drawingother Irishartists there. where O’Kelly resided–reputedly therowdiest of them all. The patronne greatly enjoyed the company of her Druidic spirituality,megalithic remains, myths, artists;the walls of her diningroom and kitchen were language,and the inter-connectednessofRoman covered in the work of her regulars, featuring thelocal Catholicism, land and the concept of nationhood, were men and women who dailyposed for posterity. some of the many points of comparison between Brittany and Ireland,noless than vibrant oral traditions Unrenowned for his portraiture, Gérôme (O’Kelly’s of story telling and music making. Specifically,in1885, master in the École desBeaux-Arts) recommended his Eugene Davis noted that the Bretons wereabrave and students to Bonnat for this training. The loose yet hospitable people, very like the Irish.2 Inevitably,Irish controlled brushwork,broad values,and the use of visitors to Brittany,suchasAloysius O’Kelly,Thomas dramatic light and shade evident in the portraits in this Hovendenand Augustus Burke,thrived on the painting areatestimony to Bonnat’s realist teaching.The historical, cultural and ethnic connections. womenwear distinctive white linen coiffes and wide collars, dark skirts, fitted bodices, embroidered Typical accounts describe awild people whoroamed ‘in waistcoats, and heavy wooden sabots.The men wear long goatskin outfits,terrorising effete Parisian woollen jackets, waistcoats, bragoù-bras,black gaiters travellers withwild criesand rudimentary personal and felt broad-rimmed hats. The artist and hygiene skills’.3 The American artist, Edward Simmons, ethnographer,René-Yves Creston has identified sixty-six maintained that the Bretons only ever washedbelow the principal styles of Breton dress,ofwhich the costume of chin twice in their lives: once when they wereborn and Cornouaille is the mostvaried, while the region of then whenthey married.4 Honoré de Balzac described Fouesnant alone comprises thirty-three communes and womenofbeauty but little virtue, and men of obduracy some dozen costume variants, of which Pont-Aven is but and chauvinism. The artist and writer,A.S.Hartrick, one. recounted a‘savage looking race, whoseemed to do nothing but searchfor driftwood, or to collect seaweed, withstrangesledges drawnbyshaggy ponies’.5 And, accordingtoHenry Blackburn, Bretons had only three vices (avarice, contemptfor womenand drunkenness) in contrast to fivevirtues (loveofcountry,resignation to the will of God, loyalty,perseverance and hospitality).6 Many such aspersions were usedtodescribe the peasantsofthe west of Ireland at the same time. Wakeman arguedthat‘itspeoplehavesturdilyretained their own individuality in traditions, custom,dress and language’,tothe extent that ‘the illimitable drudgery and child bearing of the wife who is now alegal slave brutally mastered to the end of her life…is the true picturestripped of itspoetry.’7 Over time,jaundiced accounts of Breton stupidity,savagery and superstition were transformed into sociological studiesofBreton poverty, primitivismand piety.Anartist less dependent on the popular stereotype, such as O’Kelly,would have been ever attuned to the realities of communities in transition. While O’Kelly’s first visits,inthe mid1870s, occurred at atime before modernisation was evident, his later paintings, even whenthey highlight what mightbe considered ‘Breton’ features, tend to reflect a predominantly industrious, healthy and dignified people,ascan be seeninthis painting. O’Kelly shows himself to have been an acute observer By the1880s, therewerewellover ahundred artists in of the variety and complexity of Breton dress.The Pont-Aven, including agroup of American artists with developmentofover 1,200different kindsofcoiffe whom O’Kelly associated. They mixed together in Paris reveals the extraordinary typography of dress in which and they returned summerafter summer to Brittany, almost infinitesimalvariations revealed specifics undoubtedly influencing his decision to emigrate to the concerning the locality and status of the individual, and US in 1895. which articulated relationshipsofwealth, kinship and Although others had been to Pont-Aven in the early ethnicity. 1860s,itwas not until Robert Wylie was established In describing ‘these dumb folkrooted to so therein1864 that it became an art colony.About aday immeasurable apast’ where antiquity,religion, myth and ahalf’s journey from Paris, Pont-Avenwas asmall and superstition co-exist,Wakemanconceded that ‘there community of farmers, millers and fishermen. There aresofter blendings and tenderer side pictures’, going 3 83770Gorry GalleryCatalogue 16/05/2011 16:51Page4 on to say that ‘[t]hrough the grime and slimeoftheir The genre aspects –the manpouring thedrink with his hardcold lives afew things must stand luminously lefthand on his companion’s shoulder,the young girl in revealed. Their love of and reverence forbabiesare the leftbackground wiping the bowl, the man lighting something wondrously touching… one holding deadly his pipe,the shadowy figureinthe background hatred willnot strike an enemy if that enemy’s arms squatting low to tap the cider –make for alively enfold achild. Again,likethe Irish –and it must be painting. Above all, the painting is fullofgestureand borne in mind that the people of Ireland and those of expression. Notwithstanding the dark interior,the play Brittany arethe closest of kin and from one common of light on form,onbottles and glasses, on the rugged Celtic stock,the affection and family ties, and to furniture, on theanimatedfaces of thefigures, is typical neighbourhood and communal yearnings,find here of O’Kelly,anartistwho paints sometimestightly and universal expression to adegree that almost approaches precisely,and sometimes loosely and freely. pathos’.8 Redolent of Robert Wylie, and ultimately seventeenth- The O’Kelly painting features agroup of adults century interiors, it is ‘a tavern subjectthat savors of surrounding achild, joyously holding their glasses of Munich andthe past’, accordingtothe NewYork Times.9 cider aloft. Although an identical version, dated1908, Notwithstanding this archaism,the compression of so wasgiven the title The Christening Party when it was manyfigures into such aconfined space demanded exhibited in the Irish Impressionists exhibition in the considerable skill, in addition to which he countered the National Gallery of Ireland in 1984, it is not clear that it apparent informality of the figures by granting to each a is indeed aChristening,asthe child must be nearly two notable individuality. years of age, and the toasting is not necessarily focused Some late nineteenth-century painters responded on the mother and child per se.The oval disposition is selectively to the pressures of modernism by employing designedtolet