Treasures of the North 2007

"No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters."

 Edgar Degas.

One Saturday in late March 2007, I went to the National Gallery of Ireland with my girlfriend to see Treasures from the North. The exhibition, which included 60 'masterpieces' from The Ulster Museum, was in Dublin because the Ulster museum was undergoing refurbishment.  The work spanned an over two hundred-year period in Irish art from the eighteenth century up to the late twentieth century. Because the National Gallery already had the largest collection of Irish painting in the world by combining it with those from Ulster it was a unique opportunity for lovers of Irish art to see the largest collection of Irish painting ever assembled.                   

                                                                                                   

However, what did such a spectacle prove? Well firstly it proved that from the 1700s to the 1960s Ireland failed to produce any 'genius' like Goya, van Gogh, Picasso, Dalí, Pollock, or Warhol. Secondly, Ireland failed to produce even one excellent innovator like Blake, Turner, Monet, Matisse or Klee. Thirdly, Ireland failed to produce any master manipulator of paint like Tiepolo, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, David, Manet, Sargent or Freud. Finally, Ireland failed to produce a master technician in drawing like Watteau, Ingres, Degas or even Hockney. What we had produced was an army of embittered, provincial, alcoholic, blow-hards who thought themselves masters but lacked all of the qualities required except arrogance. A handful of Irish painters like James Barry, Daniel Maclise, Water Osborne, William Orpen, John Lavery, Jack B Yeats, Patrick Graham and Brian Maguire had shown themselves to have had real talent and sometimes great skill and passion, but for various reasons they had fallen just short of international level never mind get their foot on the first rung on the ladder of the immortals.                                                                                                                   

Oil painting on canvas was an art imposed by the British Empire on the poverty stricken Irish populace, which is why until the late twentieth century the Irish art world was dominated by a West Brit elite. It is also, why it was Irish poets and musicians were central to the battle for Irish Independence and not its painters closely tied with the British establishment. Most of Irelands greatest artists had to go to England or France to train, become familiar with the latest innovations and acquire the patronage vital to their survival as artists. The brief period of oil painting in Ireland saw artists fawn at the English establishment, bow to the Catholic Church, mythologies the land, become entranced by the Impressionist adventure in France, become fevered with Irish Independence and record the solitary and often lonely vocations of Modern painters unloved in their own country. It was an art dominated by the male portrait and the landscape - saucy female portraits never mind nudes were virtually non-existent even in mythological canvases.                          

I found the first one hundred and fifty years of Irish art from the Ulster museum an utter bore - all powdered wigs, deathly serious sitters and naïve uninspired drawing and painting. This period in art - when much of the work produced was the dull-witted commissions of pompous aristocrats seeking to be flattered - was one of my least favourites. Most of this art was the propaganda of a vain, incestuous world of craven blue bloods. Technically, it was a period of smooth glass like finish - invisible brushmarks and a subdued pallet of earth tones - pretty much everything my art and the art I admire is not. Though, a beautiful nude by James Barry the tortured and unrecognised genius of early Irish painting stood out. My enthusiasm picked up though when I came to a handful of beautiful canvases by John Lavery. Now this was painting! Some people swoon when they see the mark making of Pollock or de Kooning - but although from a distance Lavery's painting look quite conventional - up close they were a fireworks display of swift and passionate brushwork. Lavery seldom painted a bad picture and two of them in this show Daylight Raid From My Studio Window’ (1917) and The Green Coat (1926) - both of which featured his wife Lady Hazel Lavery - really did deserve to be called masterpieces. I loved Lavery's pallet - of daring apple green, lilac and rich mauve - which featured in many of his paintings. Also well presented were Rodrick O'Conor, Jake B Yeats and William Orpen.  Yet again, I found Yeat's mid career painting far more effective than his later work, which I often found repulsive and dangerously incompetent. The last painters represented in the show from the late twentieth century - were an astonishing let down. William Scott, Patrick Scott and TP Flanagan were all represented by some of their worst, most incompetent painted abstract scrawls. Only Basil Blackshaw's canvas stood up to even vague scrutiny - but he was nowhere near the 'master-painter' he was hailed by some in the Irish art world as being.                        

Before leaving, the National Gallery we went to the French rooms where some new acquisitions were on display. This included a portrait by Gabriele Munter, nudes in boats by Max Pechstein, a lunch by Bonnard and a small view of Paris by van Gogh. While I was delighted to see that, the National Gallery was becoming more aggressive in collecting twentieth century art - some of these choices bewildered me.                                                                                                                  

That none of these works were 'masterpieces' of world class level, was not surprising, given the budget restrictions of the National Gallery, but what I shocked by was how minor most of them were. I had never thought much of either Munter or Pechstein since the first thing I felt an Expressionist artist must possess - was a volcanic intensity - something neither of these mannerists possessed.  As for the Bonnard - while I enjoyed Bonnard's daring colours - I found his fuzzy lack of focus in drawing and brush marks to be irritating and hard to look at for long.  However, the little van Gogh was a gem - maybe not a masterpiece but a lovely optimistic painting recording the rooftops of Paris. I remembered how I was twenty-one before I saw my first van Gogh in Amsterdam, and I felt a wave of envy towards the children of the 'Celtic Tiger' in Dublin who could now see so much more art - than the generation before them. I hoped they appreciated it!                                                                

Trip to the National Gallery of Ireland 2006

The following day I went to the National Gallery of Ireland with Carol. One of the great things about the National Gallery for me was that it was so familiar to me. I had visited it thousands of times, which meant that I could just go in to look at a half dozen paintings of my choice, without worrying that I was missing out on something. That day I saw some lovely English paintings by Hogarth, and Alfred Munnings (the arch Conservative painter of horses.) Munnings hated modern art, but he used the colorful pallet of the Impressionists, mixed with the tonal pallet of the academy. His painting of horses wading a stream was a beautiful fireworks display of colour especially in the colours of the water. Hogarth's portrait of a brother and sister was also beautifully painted in muted grays, and the under-pinning drawing was impeccable. The greatest thrill for me was to see a Modigliani reclining nude from 1917 - which was on loan. I loved Modigliani's paintings and the story of his brave life of bohemian decadence. Sadly, the recent film on his life that I had seen earlier in the year did not do him justice. Modigliani had talent to burn, and unfortunately he did indeed burn up a lot of his talent in drink, drugs, and passionate affairs with women. The nude on loan was beautifully painted in creamy rich thick opaque paint. In parts the under drawing could be detected - a loose but graceful line in thin black paint, over which he had scrubbed on a think creamy paste over the coarse grain of the canvas. The nude was painted in virtually one rich Orange/pink tone, and only subtle darker tones modelled the form. I loved this painting! It was scared on my mind!                                        

 Going around the National Gallery surrounded by such technically accomplished canvases, was both a joyful and humbling experience. It was joyful, because as a lover of art it was always a great pleasure to see works of such skill and beauty. But it was also humbling, because I realized just how far from this kind of technical genius I (or for that matter any modern painter) was. Modern art had many great qualities in which one could find pleasure. The main quality of modern art was originality. Artists of the modern age struggled to discover a style all of their own which could be recognized a mile off. Picasso, Warhol, Hirst all had their own styles, and it was their style that gave them a place in the art market. The technique was a secondary consideration, so that even if the work had technical sophistication and difficulty - it was only in the service of an idea of style - or artistic identity. But art before the late ninetieth century was first and foremost about technical skill of a supreme level. In the past an artist might only paint a dozen paintings a year, and sell them to a very local clientele. It was vital that every painting represent the artist at his very best, so many works were destroyed in case the public see the artists failures (for example Constable never showed his sketch's to the public, which was wise, as they might have thought him mad. Ironically though, in my day it was his sketches, which approached Impressionism that were most admired.) Where as in my day, art was a global business. The world was crammed with modern art museums and collections all of which wanted representative works by art stars - which led to over production and great variation in terms of the quality of works one saw.

However, there was really no point in expecting things to change. We could not go back to paint like Rembrandt, our society had changed, our training as artists had changed and the way art was consumed had changed. I thought artists like Odd Nurdum proved this point. Odd Nurdum would never be Rembrandt - he would always be a pasticheur. Rembrandt did not look back - he looked forward, he was as much of a modernist in his time as Picasso was in his. There was nothing stale in Rembrandt - his work was alive because he was of his time and yet ahead of it. Nurdum on the other hand was sickening. There was a gimpish quality to his work because there was something fundamentally incomplete in his personality. Something you could never say of Rembrandt who was one of the fullest and most complete recorders of humanity, history had ever seen. Thus the genius of Dalí was his ability to turn his old masterish technical command to new and modern subjects. Dalí was as skilled a painter technically as any in history, but by placing these skills in the service of modern surreal observations and fantasizes he avoided becoming a pasticheur. 


Before I left the National Gallery, I bought the letters of Delacroix. Delacroix's journals, which I had read constantly for years, were along with van Gogh's letters the most beautiful and thought provoking insights into the creative mind I have ever read so I had high hopes for his letters, but they turned out to be less pithy. I also got a great Taschen book on Impressionism, which was only €9 because it was part of the 25th anniversary of Taschen. How would I have survived without Taschen! I still remember the day before Taschen, when one was delighted to buy a book with only a half dozen colour photographs!