The artist's interest in early Christian, Celtic, and Neolithic carvings
opens new fields of exploration in the work. Paints Classic Theme III (1944; not extant), according to the artist, in reaction to the romantic
expressionism of Jack B. Yeats. The shallow space and sculptural forms owe much to the artist's study of the compact figures on the base of
the Moone High Cross, Moone Abbey churchyard, Co. Kildare. The Mediaeval
sculpture of Ireland will exercise a powerful fascination at the time,
as the artist explains: 'The carvings excited me greatly - in particular
the triangular heads of thetwelve
apostles at the foot of the Kildare MooneCross, that
crept into the heads of the Tinker series.'45 Discovers the three-faced
Corleck Head from Co. Cavan (2nd Century BC), the multiple carved heads
adorning the Romanesque doorways at Dysert O'Dea, Co. Clare and Clonfert
cathedral, Co. Galway, of central importance in later work. Earnán
O'Malley assesses this period in Horizon Magazine: 'During the war,
Ireland, cut off from outside activity, was driven back to her sea boundary.
Economically the country had to become self-supporting and in this attempt
a new strength and assurance was created, reflected by added interest in
painting and in music. For painters, this shutting away of the outside
world tended to dim foreign impact ... But one result of this withdrawal
was that artists had more time to assess themselves and to develop their
own personal contribution. Some, for the first time, discovered the influences
and creative possibilities of their own landscape; le Brocquy was amongst
these.'46 Dorothy Walker remarks: 'One of Louis le Brocquy's earliest interests,
which has remained with him all his life, was the neolithic tumulus at
Newgrange, Co. Meath [c.3200 BC] ... Le Brocquy's interest in Newgrange
has resulted, directly, in handsome drawings of the carved motifs on the
great stones, but indirectly, the tomb has affected all his artistic approach
being a metaphor of his life's work, embodying that paradox and ambivalence
which are characteristic of the Irish mind.'47 Regarded by the artist as
of comparable significance to theAcropolis, he notes: 'It was my mother,
Sybil le Brocquy, who originally told me ... of Newgrange, mysterious,
still unregarded and as yet undisturbed. Entered by candlelight, its pocked
engravings - for the most part indecipherable - prompted me to make freehand
drawings of them in an attempt to follow and possibly learn something through
the graphic nature of megalithic thought.'48 From this experience of wonder,
le Brocquy says: 'Since I was a boy I suppose I've always been curious
about otherness, imagining for instance how our family cocker spaniel might
perceive things - or Cro-Magnon man, for that matter, gazing at the night
sky from the comparative safety of his cave dwelling, reaching out towards
the limits of his environment with no knowledge whatever - just pure wonder
... Well, from that human capacity to wonder sprang the unprecedented flowering
of Magdalenian art, and I believe that to this day it is that same wonder
which produces all great art.'49 The artist discovers the Western Seaboard
through his friends Ernie O'Malley in Mayo, Desmond Williams in Connemara (where he draws a mural at 'Banab' Emlaghmore, Ballyconneely), and his
colleague, Derek Hill in Achill, thence to Clare Island, home of the Elizabethan
queen, Gráinne Umhaill. Makes numerous sketches and watercolours,
including Nightfall on a Connemara Bog; Bog Stones, Connemara; Stones, McDara' Island, Drying Kelp. James White notes: 'Ireland
had its effect upon his vision, as well as upon his consciousness ... The
curiously liquid light of the West of Ireland affected Louis le Brocquy's
whole vision, and its influence can still be seen in his love for greenish
shades, in his soft colouring and in a certain haziness which, in water-colour
especially, tones down all his contrasts.'50 Earnán O'Malley writes
in Horizon: 'Louis le Brocquy wandered through Connemara, a gaunt,
ragged district of mountain form, freckled lakes, broken bouldered slopes
bedazzled with light and serrated with an edge of sea. The sense of formal
composition and defined pattern met with in French landscape and elsewhere
is seldom seen here. Harsh light, which strongly emphasises form and structure,
is absent also. Instead there is an untamed country lacking in pattern,
whose informality makes it easier for people and their world to dovetail
and create a mood, and whose elusive colours merge and orchestrate in atmospheric
softness. For le Brocquy, as for others, the land was an absorbing challenge,
which for a time replaced continental conceptions of paint craft, and demanded
expression in a personal idiom. Famine Cottages, Connemara (1944),
shows his feeling for this land as an emotional concept of colour and form.
White-walled cottages, indefinite now in reduced form as hollow wind-worn
shells, slowly sink back into the soil from which they have come. Pink
hills relieve the contrast of upright house fragments, islands are suggested
in indefinite distance, and amber seaweed mist echoes colour and symbolises
the sea edge with the dependence of people on it as an alternative source
of livelihood. Shawled women jut out of darker paint passages in the foreground
as if they were worn stone shapes. An inverted tarred curragh overhanging
a path seems an earth shape of bridge with flowing water, and a muffled
green landscape threads in and out through the variegated colour planes
of white wall shadows.'51 From this landscape of desolate ruins will emerge
le Brocquy's 'Tinker' paintings to take centre stage the following year (Summer 1945).
NEXT
45 Statement made to the editor, January 2005.
46 Earnán O'Malley, 'Louis le Brocquy', Horizon, Vol. XIV,
No. 79 (London, July 1946). Reproduced in Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p.
71.
47 Dorothy Walker, 'Louis le Brocquy', exhibition catalogue Six Artists
From Ireland, (Dublin: Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Cultural
Relations Committee Deptartment Foreign Affaires, European tour, 1983),
p. 35.
48 Louis le Brocquy, Irish Art Historical Studies - in honour of
Peter Harbison, Colum Hourihane, ed. (Department of Art and Archaeology
Princeton University and Four Courts Press, 2004), p. 5.
49 Statement made to the editor, August 2005.
50 James White, 'Contemporary Irish Artists (VI): Louis le Brocquy', Envoy, vol. 2, no. 6, (Dublin, May 6, 1950), p. 56.
51 Earnán O'Malley, 'Louis le Brocquy', Horizon, Vol. XIV,
No. 79 (London, July 1946). Reproduced in Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p.
72.
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Travelling Man in Connemara, 1947
Pen, ink, watercolour, gouqche on paper
17.8 x 12.4 cm
Detail of the twelve apostles
foot of the Moone High Cross Moone
Abbey churchyard, County Kildare
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