“When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland’s heart begin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured quietude.”
W.B. Yeats, “To Ireland in the Coming Times”
The literary voices of Ireland are familiar ones even to Americans with a passing interest in the island across the ocean. For it was through the pens of Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and most notably W.B. Yeats that Ireland’s bitter and beautiful story was told.
Yet if, as the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, then the recent renewed interest in art of the Emerald Isle promises to reveal volumes more about this country of myth and legend.
It is curious that while poet William Butler Yeats is an indelible part of the Irish cultural landscape, his brother, Jack, probably the most important Irish painter of all time, remains obscure trivia for most Americans.
That may change with what appears to be an Irish art revival, a movement that began to swell earlier this decade with the economic prosperity of Ireland and that seems to climax this year with four major exhibitions of Irish art opening this summer in New York and London and with Irish sales to be held this week by Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses.
Just a decade ago, paintings by Yeats and fellow early 20th Century Irish artists Sir John Lavery and Sir William Orpen received nary a nod on the international art market — if the works could be found at all. Today some of the artists’ finest works are on the auction block and are expected to bring in or top six figures.
“Being an Irish artist has a certain cachet,” said James Steward, director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art and curator of “When Time Began to Rant and Rage,” an exhibition of 20th Century art showing in New York this summer and in Ann Arbor beginning Sept. 25.
Why is Irish art suddenly hot? And why was it virtually ignored by the international community until now? Answers to those questions lie in Ireland’s history of political turmoil and economic despair and in the more recent roar of the financial success that is the Celtic Tiger.
The visual arts in Ireland have a staggered history. Though artistic images were of primary importance in pre-British Celtic culture, more than 200 years of English occupation squelched distinctive Irish artistic expression in the visual arts until the Celtic revival of the late 1800s, Steward said.
“I make the argument that until the 1890s, there was no such thing as Irish art,” Steward said. “Before then, anything Irish had been subsumed into the English culture.”
Though Irish artists were creating works during English rule, “their art was indistinguishable from British,” Steward said. The Irish artists were painting for a British or Anglo-Irish market, and as a result their work was in the style and manner of British artists.
That began to change at the turn of the century, a time that, as Yeats wrote, “made Ireland’s heart begin to beat.” Support for the Irish Free State began to build, the Irish were rediscovering their own language and culture, and Irish artists who had gone to study with the Impressionists in France returned home with a renewed passion to portray all things Irish.
Painters such as Orpen assumed a new Irish identity in their paintings, sometimes dressing themselves or their subjects in ethnic Irish garb to make the point. In Orpen’s 1916 self-portrait, “The Man from Aran,” a painting featured in Christie’s sale Thursday that is expected to sell for upward of $1.3 million, the artist painted himself standing boldly in the cloth of the west coast islands, a land that retained the Gaelic language and traditions.
“What he is trying to get across is his own ruggedness, his Irishness,” said Danny Kinahan, Christie’s representative for Ireland.
Other artists, including Orpen student Sean Keating, set off for the remote west coast of Ireland, a sort of Arles, France, for Irish artists where they sought inspiration and found a land before British time.
“They embraced the west of Ireland,” Steward said. “The peasant west was a land uncorrupted by the British. It symbolized the truly Irish, the untainted.”
Artists began to celebrate the peasant and the impoverished simplicity of the region in their painting — subjects that had never been seen before in their art.
As part of this rekindled fire of Irishness, a number of artists like Keating and Lavery took on the cause of independence in their work and in doing so allied themselves with the prominent political leaders of the day.
“As the independence movement became more violent, the painters saw their work as a call to arms,” Steward said.
And if not an explicit declaration of war, their work often sympathized with the independence fighters.
Lavery’s gentle depiction of Irish leader Michael Collins on his deathbed is one example. Painted in 1922, after Collins was killed in a British ambush, the portrait of a pale and handsome Collins wrapped in the Irish flag with a crucifix lying on his chest “has very much the sense of a friend mourning the loss of a friend,” Steward said, adding that the portrait can be seen in the University of Michigan exhibition.
Indeed, Lavery and Collins were friends. Lavery’s second wife, the beautiful Hazel, daughter of Armour meat executive Edward Martyn, prominent Chicago socialite and an artist herself, was an ardent supporter of the independence movement in her adopted land and introduced her husband to several of the leaders. Hazel also was Collins’ lover for a time.
As Irish-British politics remained a central theme in Irish life throughout the century, so too did it remain a subject for Irish art. “It is important to see all Irish art as political,” Steward said. It is only in the last five years, with the nation’s newfound prosperity and international focus through its connection with the European Union, that its artists are looking outside the country and inside themselves for subjects and inspiration, he said.
So linked were the Irish artists with the Irish movement and so compelling their stories, it is perplexing why they too were not embraced by their countrymen and by those of the Irish diaspora who cling to Irish writers and music.
The answer, experts said, is simple economics.
“We didn’t have a wealthy Ireland at the beginning of the century, and you didn’t have people buying their own artists,” Kinahan said.
Art was simply out of reach for many poor Irish and Irish immigrants and as such, it became less familiar.
“Everyone can have a copy of Ulysses in their home, but it is not so easy to have a Yeats painting or a Lavery,” said Tom O’Gorman, a Chicago writer and editor of The World of Hibernia, a quarterly magazine for the Irish diaspora. O’Gorman, the son of Irish immigrant parents, is writing a book about Hazel Lavery and owns a Lavery sketch.
“Most Irish here in America, their grandparents immigrating couldn’t afford one of these paintings. They could barely afford to eat.”
Just as prominent Irish-Americans have prospered to the extent that they can afford to collect art, so too have the Irish back home. The new wealth in Ireland is in the hands of the young entrepreneurs, sons and daughters of the Irish peasant, who can now buy a piece of their culture back from the predominantly Anglo-Irish collectors who have held much of the nation’s artwork.
“When they make their money, they want to invest it in works by Irish artists,” Kinahan said.
And because the Irish market is booming, more old-money families are selling off their collections for huge profits, bringing previously unknown or unseen works before the public, Steward said.
Though the bulk of the Irish market is in Ireland, Irish-Americans are also hungry for Irish art. Two of the more prominent collectors are Peter Lynch of Fidelity Mutual, who is rumored to have purchased the Yeats work “Farewll to Mayo” for more than $1 million, and Brian Burns, a San Francisco businessman whose more than 150 pictures have been shown at the Boston College Museum of Art.
“The Irish community here has great affection for all things Irish,” said Eamon Hickey, Chicago’s consul general of Ireland. “They are constantly exploring new aspects of their cultural identity.”
“First it is a matter of taste; they are beautifully executed,” O’Gorman said of Irish paintings. “It is also a cultural thing, taking pride in the artistic expression of your own ethnic tradition. To a person of Irish nationality, it has an extra interest and value.”
WHERE TO SEE IRISH ART
Where to see or buy Irish art this summer:
Christie’s Irish Sale; Thursday (312-787-2765).
Sotheby’s Irish Sale; Friday (212-606-7000).
“When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative Painting from 20th Century Ireland”: Grey Art Gallery, New York University, May 25-July 24; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Sept. 25-Jan. 2, 2000.
“Irish Masterpieces from the 18th and 19th Century”: Pyms Gallery, London, opens in June.
“0044”: An exhibit of contemporary Irish artists living in England, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York, June 20-Sept. 1.
“A Measured Quietude: Contemporary Irish Drawings”: Drawing Center, New York City, June 23-July 30.
Where to see Irish art in Chicago:
John David Mooney Foundation, 114 W. Kinzie St. The foundation’s exhibition space shows contemporary international artists and plans to feature Irish artists next spring.
Yello Gallery, 1630 N. Milwaukee Ave. Currently showing paintings by contemporary Irish artist Conor McGrady.
NEW ART IS BOOMING TOO
Ireland’s booming economy is not only fueling the sales of works by the Irish Master painters of the early 20th Century. It is also creating a fertile environment for tomorrow’s Irish artists through an arts-intensive educational system that fosters talent and through the large commissions available to artists who create public works for the country’s towns and cities.
“I don’t know of any country which is as committed to bringing their young artists toward realizing their work,” says John David Mooney, whose non-profit foundation in Chicago provides residency positions and exhibit space for contemporary artists from across the globe. “Irish artists right now hold a major place in all of international contemporary art.”
Contemporary Irish artists tend to eschew the traditional west coast pastoral style, favoring either a more international or more intensely personal theme, says James Steward, director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor. This trend follows Ireland’s emergence into the international scene as a member of the European Union.
Yet, this new outward-focused Irish artistic aesthetic is at times overshadowed by the growing interest in the intensely nationalistic art of a Jack Yeats or a Sean Keating. This presents a challenge to gallery owners who show avant-garde Irish artists. Clients — usually the American buyers — often come to Irish art galleries expecting traditional Irish art: green pastures, rocky cliffs and rough peasants. Confronted with works by artists such as Sean Scully or Sarah Iremonger, who reject depicting the Eire of old, buyers complain the art is not Irish enough.
“American buyers want more established work,” says Paul Tuminaro, director of Yello Gallery, 1630 N. Milwaukee Ave., which specializes in contemporary Irish artists. “The art I represent sold well in Ireland. (But) people who walk in here want to know the work is from Ireland.”
