THE ROYAL Hibernian Academy's annual exhibition, which opened today in 1951, was enlivened by the work of some modern British artists "rubbing disdainful shoulders with Connemara landscapes and pretty flower studies", in the view of The Irish Timescritic Tony Gray, who signed himself GHG. They had been invited to exhibit by Louis le Brocquy among others, but Gray found it difficult to reconcile this invitation with the Academy's attitude to native abstractions which, with few exceptions, were missing from the show. What was there, though, were the works of many artists whose names are familiar from the salesrooms of the recent art market boom.
RHA EXHIBITION: 1 – OILS
There are 188 oil paintings on view, and it is hard to pick out more than half a dozen which haunt, or excite, or baffle, or move the onlooker in any way. With the exception of Yeats, le Brocquy and one or two more, the other painters have just turned in pedestrian pictures of people and places and things [. . .]
Among the portraits, Sir Gerald Kelly's Mantilla Negraand La Novia del Toreroare fine examples of portraiture in the accepted style; the former in particular, with its sensitive treatment of the black lace velvet mantilla and the pink of the lips, echoed in the necklace, is a thoroughly satisfying painting. Another unusually good portrait, all the more remarkable because it is the work of one of the younger painters working in Ireland, is Robertson Craig's Coming of Age. It is not easy to paint a beautiful young woman wearing a vivid yellow evening frock in a formal setting without making the result look like an advertisement for face powder, but Mr Craig has succeeded in producing a picture that is delicate, restrained and full of charm. Roderic O'Connor has another remarkable portrait – a touching study of a sad-eyed, old-fashioned Mexican child.
Margaret Clarke has a portrait of Prof Mary Macken. William Conor has painted Lord Farnham. Seán O’Sullivan contributes a portrait of Dr Barbara Moran, and Leo Whelan exhibits portraits of the president of Ireland, of the Very Rev Thomas O’Donnell, and of Alic McCabe.
[. . .] Frank McKelvey's extreme confidence in carrying out the task he sets for himself is well illustrated in the contrast between his Irish landscapes and the Honfleur studies, in which the skies, vivid and hazy, are every bit as unmistakably French as the transparent yellow mist in River Bannis an Irish mist.
Louis le Brocquy's The Human Childis a curious picture, alive and vital, and very expressive. It should, at first glance, be resented as a gross libel on childhood; for it is grotesque and distorted: yet, as you study the picture, you find that in a queer way the painter has caught the very essence of helpless, awkward infancy. This is not a painting of any particular child; it is rather a formula, the lowest common denominator, perhaps, of universal infancy.
For the rest, there are typical landscapes by Charles Lamb and Maurice McGonagle; dim still-life studies by Lady Glenavy, and flamboyant flowers and women by George Collie; landscapes of varying competence by Fergus O’Ryan, Letitia Hamilton, Tom Nisbet, Lillian Davidson, about which anything that was written last year remains valid. And, of course, there are a few studies of men and women of the far west from the brush of Mr John Keating, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy, who seems to be sinking still deeper into the rut he has routed out for himself.
GHG
To read this story in its original format and all the other items making the news on this day in 1951 go to www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1951/0423/Pg004.html#Ar00403