1 / First Works

Louis le Brocquy was born in Dublin in 1916. He studied chemistry at Kevin Street Technical School and Trinity College Dublin. During this period he gains an amateur interest in art, prompted in particular by music. Produces his first sculpture Evolution (1934; plasticine, plaster cast), alongside the experimental paintings Sunlight in a Wood (a.k.a. Summer Haze, 1935), and L'Après-Midi d'un Faune (1937), all light-heartedly entered into the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibitions of 1937-38. Reporting in May 1937, the Dublin Evening Mail writes: 'One rarely hears of a young artist breaking through the portals of the Royal Hibernian Academy without having had a lesson in art ... Both his exhibits attracted attention on the opening day ... He is not, as I had expected, exceptionally keen on art, but is more interested in his chemistry work. The fact is surprising that these, the only tw works of art which he has ever completed, were accepted and hung in the Academy, for he has not hitherto taken it devotedly'. In the summer of 1938, however, le Brocquy will envisage for the first time becoming a painter, having previously regarded the matter as nothing more or less than a diversion. Unaccountably drawn to reproductions of old master paintings with which he had long been familiar, the young chemist immerses himself in the works of Titian (1485-1576), Velázquez (1599-1660), Goya (1746-1828) and Manet (1832-1883), later evoking his particular wonder of Rembrandt's A Woman bathing in a Stream (1654; National Gallery, London), in which 'the handling of white lead impasto could miraculously become the texture of her coarse white dress.' Further in time the artist will record the following impression: 'Perhaps of all painters, Rembrandt has given me the deepest insight. Just now, looking long at an overwhelming self-portrait, I had a disquieting experience. It was not that the hand which held the brushes in the painting became, so to speak, my hand. It was that I identified with the paint on the canvas so that my hand understood that painted hand, felt those painted brushes. For a moment I left the actual world. For an instant I entered through the looking-glass of this painted reality, as though into an other room.' ... | CHRONOLOGY OF A LIFE: EARLY WORK

Realising that painting is an essential process that concerns him, his laboratory work takes on new experiments with oils, pigments and wax-resins. Makes frequent visits to Dublin's Municipal and National Galleries, where the 'deep humanity' of Goya's A Lady in a Black Mantilla (c.1805; NGI) impresses him, as will El Greco's St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (1590-95; NGI), perceived 'within a white ectoplasmic cloud in which spirit has become paint, paint spirit.' This metamorphic power of art will remain an enduring source of wonder throughout the artist's life: 'Since painting first interested me, I have been drawn to a constant tradition which I think of as central to this old European art. This implies a peculiar use of oil paint; not to symbolise, not to describe the object, nor to realise an abstract image but rather to allow the paint, while insisting upon its own palpable nature, to reconstitute (if it will) the object of one's experience. In certain works of old masters, the paint (with its qualities of colour, tone and texture) has been transformed into the experienced object. Obversely the image of the object has become paint. This dichotomy, this tension pulls taut the nerves of insight. Reality is stripped down to a deeper layer and the ordinary is seen to be marvellous.' Encouraged by his mother and with no formal training, leaves Ireland to study major European art collections (November 1938) Travels widely absorbing the old masters in London, Paris, Venice and Geneva, then housing the Prado Collection during the Spanish Civil War. Spends several weeks among the Spanish masters. From this deep experience le Brocquy recalls his revelatory encounter with Velázquez' Las Meninas (1654; Museo Nacíonal del Prado): 'There in front of this huge work stood a small group of fellow visitors, partially obscuring the figures in the painting. Suddenly I perceived that the ephemeral actuality of the viewers was less real than the painted image before them. I believe at that moment I became a painter'..In 1939 he settled briefly in Menton in the south of France, but returned to Ireland just before the German occupation of France in 1940. Le Brocquy spent the war years in Dublin, He exhibited at the RHA, but after the rejection of his work in 1942 and 1943, he became actively involved in setting up the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. A number of influences are apparent in le Brocquy's art art at that time. This eclectic approach is indicative of his lack of any formal art training and also of the wide range of sources to which he had exposed himself. Divided into an academic period, a white impressionist period, and a modernist linear period, the compositions establish le Brocquy's preoccupation with the inward isolation of the human individual.