At the end of
January 2005, I went to the National Gallery with my girlfriend to see the Turner
watercolours, which were only shown once a year in January in order to preserve
them from humidity. This pilgrimage had been a regular one for me for nearly
twenty years and it was always a treat. In his watercolours Turner balanced
loose gestural sweeps of watercolour with super fine details added with the
smallest of paint brushes. Sometimes he was happy to leave a watercolour
finished after only a few splashy swirls of blue, yellow and umber, while at
others he would work the image up to the most detailed and realistic level, yet
his images would always glow with light and the paint would hardly ever became
fully opaque. In his lifetime Turner produced over 20,000 watercolours and 300
oil paintings - proof positive that his virtuosity was the product of both
immense talent but also constant hard work. Looking at great work like Turners
was never depressing the way worthy academic art was nearly always. I was fully
aware that Turner possessed a gift for watercolour that far surpassed anything
I could ever do, but I did not feel competitive or jealous or enviously
critical - all I felt was joy and inspiration. Great art did not intimidate me
it just inspired and gave joy. It was second-rate art that irritated me. Art
that was full of official honours and pompous self-importance - but which was
actually tedious - fully of labour and self-promotion but devoid of genius,
originality or anything meaningful to say.
A good example of this
in Ireland was Evie Hone, who was given a tiny room in the National Gallery. Frankly,
she did not deserve even this. In Ireland, Hone was a well-known historical
figure. Largely because she studied in France under Gleizes and produced fifth
rate Cubist work in the 1920s. Gleizes was a jumped up pompous chancer who
ripped off the achievements of Picasso and Braque, backdated his work in order
to pretend that he had invented Cubism - and turned it into an academic mish-mash.
The fact that Hone produced Cubist work was nothing special. It seems that
every painter in Europe in the 1920s went through a cubist phase. Some like
Mondrain, Miró and Klee managed to come out the other end stronger artists with
their own voice, but most spent their lives as nothing but cheep plagiarists.
Looking at Hones semi-realist work and stained glass work one was also left
gapping open mouthed that someone who drew so badly could ever been taking
seriously. Late in her life after years of artistic experience, she still drew
with all the competence of a dim-witted high-school student. Therefore, it was
a relief to leave her work and go into the Yeats room with Carol. Yeat's was a
very hit and miss painter. His late gestural expressionist canvases of horses,
street scenes and circus are often cluttered, unformed and sloppy in the
extreme. But at their best they have a poetry and emotion all their own. Personally,
my favourite Yeats works were from the 1920s when he produced some very moving
street scenes that recorded a Dublin that was dead and gone. Yeats was never as
technically competent as Orpen, but he made up for this with a greater
emotional range.