Mainie Jellett 4

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 MAINIE JELLETT 4 PATRICK COLLINS 10 MARTIN GALE 16 ROBERT BALLAGH 24 ALICE MAHER 32 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 44 Introduction In Colour is an exhibition featuring work This educational resource catalogue focuses by some of Ireland’s most prolific 19th and on five artists featured in the show, Martin 20th century artists, studied on the leaving Gale, Robert Ballagh, Alice Maher, Mainie certificate art history syllabus. Programmed Jellett and Patrick Collins. To maximise by Fingal County Council in partnership with learning, it should be used in conjunction Draíocht, the show hosts works borrowed with a visit to the exhibition, and focused tour from the extensive collections of AIB, the where possible. You will read a short biography Arts Council and Limerick City Gallery. on each artist, an analysis of their artwork, An education programme accompanies the their style, processes employed and influences show and aims to bring the leaving certificate throughout their career. Questions highlighted art history syllabus to life by showing these throughout the text, the student response key works and providing students and teachers task, and a list of other available resources, with the opportunity to engage in a variety have been designed to allow interaction with of educational events. We are delighted to the information and encourage looking at the have artists Alice Maher, Robert Ballagh and work anew. We invite all visitors to use the Martin Gale visit as part of this programme exhibition and resource catalogue as an access and give personal insight into their practice. point for further investigation and discussion In Colour recognises the benefit of working on the artists and their work. in partnership with collections representing the wealth of Irish art history. We endeavour Julie Clarke Caroline Cowley to explore the full potential of In Colour as an Youth & Education Public Art educational concept, and welcome feedback Fingal Arts Office Fingal Arts Office from programme visitors. —3 Mainie Jellett Mary Harriett (Mainie) Jellett was born in 1897 Gleizes for his advice and tuition. Gleizes was Abstract art is into a distinguished middle-class family on the co-author of the seminal book Du ‘Cubisme’, complex and often Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin. The eldest of four which detailed his early theories relating to daughters, she demonstrated a prodigious the movement. This association would mark difficult for the talent in both music and art, becoming an the start of a collaborative engagement viewer to understand. accomplished pianist. Academic achievement, between the three artists to study, research Consider your first independence and creativity were fostered and establish principles and laws that would in the Jellett household, and Mainie underpin a radical form of cubism. reaction and opinion demonstrated a strong intellect to match from a purely aesthetic her creative talents. She was home-schooled In the early twentieth century, Irish artists and response, examining along with her sisters, during which time they critics had limited exposure to art movements received drawing and painting lessons from that were explorative and avant-garde in their the artist’s use of line, Elizabeth Yeats, sister of the artist Jack B. focus and direction. Therefore, Jellett endured colour, shape, pattern Yeats and poet William Butler Yeats. endless dismissive and severe criticism from and texture. her peers and critics in Ireland, who did not In 1914 Jellett attended the Dublin Metropolitan understand the histories, theories and School of Art. On completing her studies and rationales that underpinned her work. Detail the words and on the advice of a family friend, she moved As an artist and a dedicated art educator, descriptions that to London at the age of 18 to study under Jellett tirelessly ‘lectured, taught, campaigned, the painter Walter Sickert. This marked the argued and explained the principles of modern come to mind. beginning of Jellett’s journey to source and painting’ 1. In her teaching of art, she remained work under several influential tutors who would objective and open, thereby facilitating her Why was white chosen advocate modernist principles and ideals. students to develop their own styles of painting. to illuminate the In 1920, while returning to Dublin for a brief central shape? period to paint, Jellett’s talent and determination Jellett believed that the artist was, first and were recognised when she won the Taylor Art foremost, a crafts person whose skill and Prize and Scholarship. That same year, creative talents could be utilised for the benefit What do you think this she exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy of society. She was a prolific artist influenced shape might suggest? and the Oireachtas Exhibition, establishing by the Arts and Crafts Movement. Her creative herself as a professional artist. talents and skills diversified into many areas. These included theatre set design and cubist Could a story unravel In 1921, growing restless with the lack of rug design. Jellett was commissioned by the to tell us what the vision that characterised the conservative Irish government to create and paint murals painting is about? Irish art scene, Jellett moved to Paris to join for the British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow fellow Irish artist Evie Hone to study under in 1938 and the New York World’s Fair in 1939. the cubist painter André Lhote. This was her The designs demonstrated a unification of her How are areas of the first introduction to cubism. Cubism was fine-art and craft-based skills. painting separated? one of the most influential art movements of the twentieth century. Its inception evolved In her search for truth and vision as a painter, through the initial advice of Paul Cézanne, Mainie Jellett became a seminal figure and What element to explore ‘nature in terms of the cylinder, leader of the Irish modernist movement. In her is introduced by the sphere and the cone’. The artists Pablo lifetime, she exhibited extensively throughout Picasso and Georges Braque were two of the Europe, where her work was highly respected the artist to connect leading figures in the development and practice and well received. the picture plane of cubism during its early stages. as a whole? The Irish Exhibition of Living Art was founded After a year of attending classes in Lhote’s in 1943 with a remit to liberate the visual arts studio, Jellett and Hone were ready to in Ireland and promote modernist ideals. move on to pursue their exploration of non- A year before her death, Jellett became representational art. They sought out Albert its first chairperson. 4— Title: Composition with 3 Elements Size: 75 x 90 cm Media: Oil on canvas Date: c1935 AIB Art Collection Artist’s Comment: ‘I believe that a work of art is something that is born in the mind and in the innermost emotions; it may lie dormant in the deep recesses of the artist’s consciousness till the moment strikes for its release and realisation in material form… ’ 2 —5 AESTHETIC RESPONSE/ SUBJECT/THEMES/ Examine the IMPACT CONTEXT painting closely. Can you identify the Jellett believed that the essence of art is born Throughout her life as an artist, Mainie Jellett figures within the from an innate need to create. In abstract art, always emphasised the importance of observing composition? this could be realised through utilising the and understanding nature. Even when her work elements of colour, form and rhythm. was non-representational, the patterns and colours that she used within her compositions What colours do your sought to replicate the harmony, balance and eyes focus on first? FORMAL ANALYSIS rhythm of nature. AND REFLECTION As a young art student, the subject matter Why do you think that Composition with Three Elements (c.1935) that Jellett explored was predominantly specific colours were marks a period of time when Jellett practised figurative painting – portraits and studies synthetic cubism. In contrast to analytical of family members. Under the tuition of the chosen in certain cubism, synthetic cubism promotes a painters William Orpen and Walter Sickert, areas of the painting? constructivist approach, whereby the artist she progressed to concentrating on large- builds up the image through elements of shape scale nude painting, demonstrating mastery and form. Even though the subject matter is in both draughtsmanship and composition. What do you think non-representational, the artist still adheres the linear arcs, to a complex set of theories, rules and laws In her later years, Jellett detailed how her seen in the centre that govern its practice. Synthetic cubism work had evolved to focus on three specific was an experimental, decorative and textural areas. Firstly, there was a concentration on and to the right of exponent of cubism, through its use of collage non-representational painting, derived from the composition, and materials. an emotional connection with nature or an might signify? experience. Work such as Sea Rhythm (1939) In analytical cubism, the artist views a exemplifies Jellett’s ability and skill as a subject from multiple angles and records colourist. Tonal swirls of blues and greens each angle, as if you were to rotate around interspersed with white emulate the rhythmic a head, documenting it from every position, pattern of water in perpetual motion. placing each viewpoint side by side. The three- dimensional viewpoint is presented on a two- Secondly, Jellett’s work was based on biblical dimensional surface, hence the distortion of themes, as she herself was a religious and a realistic presented form. spiritual person. She was influenced by the work of the early Renaissance artist Fra Jellett described the division between the Angelico, celebrated for his beautiful frescos, two forms of cubism as ‘Cubists who work from which gave an emotive and serene quality to natural forms as their basis and those who work religious themes.

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