"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!