The artist's motivation comes about through a commission by the Swedish
gallery-owner Per-Olov Borjesson to assemble a portfolio of thirty three
aquatints of Nobel prizewinners by international artists. Le Brocquy remarks:
'From among the several Irish Nobel prizewinners at that date I chose Yeats
as my subject, having known him when I was a boy and because of his vast
and mysterious personality. I made a number of studies for my final aquatint,
and was struck by their diversity. It was then I realised that a portrait
can no longer be the stable, pillared entity of Renaissance vision - that
the portrait in our time can have no visual finality.'201 John Montague
observes: 'So the le Brocquy who rejected an early career as a portrait
painter finds himself, as all artists do, back where he started, but with
an added richness.'202 According to Alistair Smith: 'Le Brocquy found himself
painting study after study in watercolour, charchoal and oil, as a form
of preparation for the final print. That aquatint, concluded in the suggestive,
vestigial manner of some of the earlier Heads, showed the poet full-face,
hovering within the white "matrix" of space and time ... The
etching bears the title Study towards an Image of WB Yeats, as did
many of the other pictures of Yeats which le Brocquy created in preparation
for this image, and which he was to continue to create after its completion.'203
Embarks on the Portrait Heads series (1975-2006), the fifth distinctive
period in the artist's work. The artist explains: 'In order to produce
a human image which has some kind of contemporary relevance, you have to
recognise that certain factors which have arisen in the last hundred years
have revolutionised the way we look at things. Because of photography and
the cinema on the one hand, and psychology on the other, we can no longer
regard a human being as a static entity, subject to merely biological change
... Replacing the single definitive image by a series of inconclusive images
has, therefore, perhaps something to do with contemporary vision, perceiving
the image as a variable conception rather than a definitive manifestation
in the Renaissance sense ... Repetition, on the other hand, implies not
linear but circular thought, a merry-go-round interpretation of
reality, another form of completion, another whole, which can be entered
or left at any point. This latter counter-Renaissance tendency is, curiously
enough, already evident here and there within our Irish tradition, from
the Books of Kells and Lindisfarne to Finnegans Wake.'204 Dorothy
walker notes:
'His heads of writers derive directly from his earlier heads of ancestors,
as being spirits, like the great father-figures of Yeats and Joyce, who
still influence our consciousness. He is not interested in the traditional
portrait, the single static image, feeling that photography has superceded
the documentary role of the painted likeness. He is primarily interested
in creating an image of a human face which by its own autonomy as a work
of art will convey the inner presence of a human personality with greater
intensity than any depiction, however skilled, of external appearance.
He seeks among multiple images of the same person an epiphanic flash of
what lies hidden behind "the billowing curtain of the face",
and to make palpable what is sensed in the image of an individual trapped
within the canvas. His method is distinctly Proustian, in which the "quick"
of the epiphany is caught by involuntary accident.'205 Elaborating on his
working method le Brocquy says: 'In these studies I have therefore tried,
as uncritically as I could, to allow different aspects of Yeat's appearance
to emerge. These I have recalled principally from photographs made throughout
his life and, for the most part, without referring to them directly. Where
I have worked from them directly, I have consulted two or more at the same
time and - since these photographs often bear little resemblance to each
other - I have made no attempt to relate one to the other. On the contrary,
I have encouraged differing and sometimes contradictory images to emerge
spontaneously, in order - as it were - to exorcize the conventional or
shared image I recall of W. B. Yeats, and in the hope of discovering a
more immediate image, stilled and free of circumstance, underlying the
ever-changing aspect of this phenomenal Irishman.'206 According to John
Russell: 'Even the evocations of the massed heads in the Romanesque abbey
of Clonfert, in Galway, did not quite prepare him for the ordeal of bringing
W.B. Yeats back to life.'207 The Borjesson commission gives rise to one
hundred studies in various media executed between 1975-76. John Montague
observes: 'Yeats, the most varied mind of the Irish race, the last - and
perhaps the only - Romantic poet in English to manage a full career. Le
Brocquy, the most dedicated Irish painter since Yeat's brother died, with
an intuitivesympathy
for literature and mythology, an increasingly rare reverence before the
human. Their meeting has an aspect of the inevitability. In the last decade
le Brocquy has re-invented for himself the idea of portraiture, moving
through family and friends to contemplate master spirits of his country,
like Joyce and Beckett. As he says "simply because by their works
I know them, and am drawn to peer through their familiar, ambiguous faces
which mask - and at the same time embody - the great worlds of their vision".
And now Yeats, whom le Brocquy knew as a boy. Fascinatingly, the ideals
and techniques of the two artists have much in common. One of the foolishnesses
of modern psychology is to believe that we have only a few, usually warring,
selves. But a Prospero, like Yeats, may live many lives, inhabit many faces,
while achieving a unity in variety. At an early stage, he began to play
with his doctrine of the Mask, the anti-self, as a discipline for spiritual
or physical plenitude. 'I call to my own opposite", he says, "all
/ That I have least looked upon". ... For behind the silver-haired
Senator, the majestic black hatted Nobel Prize winner, with his carefully
rehearsed gestures, is still the young poet, the spiritual fanatic search
of truth. Crow, heron, eagle, scarecrow, le Brocquy dwells with wonder
on the changing roles of Yeats; but my supreme favourite among these psychic
portraits, these attempts to show how the spirit speaks and shines through
the casket of the brain, the exposed or retreated eye, the chosen regalia,
is one which combines the earlier and later selves. The eyes are lifted
triumphantly above the glasses, the lips are widening to smile, the hair
is in disarray; this man has lived a strenuous life of achievement, has
glimpsed truth and is not afraid of death: his "ancient glittering
eyes are gay".'208 Exhibition at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin (November
1975); Arts Council of Northern Ireland (January 1976); Crawford Municipal
Gallery of Art, Cork (February 1976): Studies Towards an Image
of W.B. Yeats, seventy-three works, Dorothy Walker writes in Hibernia:
'Of the various media included in the studies, charcoal drawing, water-colour
(including a fascinating deep sea blue Yeats englouti), oil painting
and etching, while the final etchings are perhaps the clearest images,
I find the paintings the most engrossing in that, precisely because of
their painterly use of different planes and colours emerging both simultaneously
and one after the other, they convey the presence of a person whom one
gets to know progressively as he gradually reveals different aspects, facets
and depths of his personality. Thepaintings do also make clear the final
skill of the artist in conveying in one single work what a lesser artist
might take a roomful of statements to explain.'209 Anne Yeats recounts
her impressions in The Irish Times: 'I found it a haunting and unforgettable
experience to walk into a room and all around the walls to see the faces
of my father, so many of them as I remember him, that is in the later faces.
I was not born until my father was fifty-two years of age, and the faces
that I remember best are those of the thirties, of the powerful head with
a shock of white hair, the strong nose and forceful expression, captured
so splendidly in some of le Brocquy's paintings... I have seen many other
portraits, notably that by Augustus John, who gave him an oddly dissipated
look, and the superb painting by Mancini (which my mother did not like:
she said it was 'Yeats the public man') and many others leading up to Louis
le Brocquy's room full of faces, each one apparently an impression, but
adding, in total, to an astonishing feeling of vigour and intellectual
liveliness.'210 Francis Bacon writes to the artist his admiration of the
portrait heads (January 1976; Francis Bacon Studio Archive, Dublin City
Gallery The Hugh Lane). Recently made Chevalier de la Légion
d'Honneur the artist prepares for his first exhibitions in Paris, Galerie
la Demeure, Les Gaulois, Suite de 6 tapisseries (September 1976); Musée d'Art
Moderne de la Ville de Paris (October 1976), A la Recherche de W. B.
Yeats, Cent portraits imaginaires.Geneviève Breerette writes
in Le Monde (trans.): 'Le Brocquy does not lock the man into his
outward appearance. He neither confines nor sets any limit. Each portrait
opens onto yet another portrait of the same man lying behind his mask.
With paintbrush, pencil or charcoal he assaults, caresses, destroys, insistently
wears down the image, digging within the shadow forming the central vertical
line from which the features spring. Between the lock of hair hanging to
one side and his round spectacles the line of the mouth and the oval form
of a determined chin, the image is never still, never definitive, it surfaces
from the white page in successive planes, gradually becoming mistily visible
with skilful sureness. Brilliant, spectacular in its ensemble of forty-eight
charcoal drawings and forty-four watercolours of similar format.'211 In
October 1976 the artist fractures his scaphoid bone while in Paris. According
to Anne Madden: 'This produced a practical challenge to his conviction
that such meaning as his work possessed depended on a series of provoked
accidents and was not due to dexterity as had been widely assumed.'212
The artist explains: 'Ironically enough I myself have frequently been reproached
with possessing too much dexterity, too much technical skill. Recently
I was given a rather dramatic opportunity to disprove this charge when,
after a bone-grafting operation to my right hand, my whole arm was immobilized
in plaster for a number of months. During this period the images which
emerged under my ignorant left hand were in fact in no way distinguishable
from those induced by my practiced right hand. Neither better nor worse.'213
Francis Bacon writes to the artist after the accident concerned about his
painting (Francis Bacon Studio Archive, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane).
Le Brocquy replies by typewriter: 'The worst I can complain of is discomfort
and, of course, the great bore that it is. But I am very much less depressed
than otherwise as I am able to work with my ignorant left hand. There is
no apparent difference, which pleases me as it appears to prove that no
predictable skill is involved, and that the image emerges not by imposition
but, as it were, autonomously - jerked into some kind of coherence by a
series of vaguely directed accidents, with which you are supremely familiar.'214
NEXT
201 Louis le Brocquy, 'An Interview with Louis le Brocquy
by George Morgan', Louis le Brocquy, The Head Image (Kinsale: Gandon
Editions, 1996). p. 15.
202 John Montague, 'Primal Scream, The Later le Brocquy', The Arts in
Ireland, Vol. 2. No I (Dublin, 1973), p. 10.
203 Alistair Smith, 'Louis le Brocquy: On the Spiritual in Art', Louis
le Brocquy, Paintings 1939 - 1996, (Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern
Art, October 1996 - February 1997), p. 44.
204 Louis le Brocquy, 'An Interview with Louis le Brocquy by George Morgan', Louis le Brocquy, The Head Image (Kinsale: Gandon Editions, 1996).
p. 7.
205 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. 35-36.
206 Louis le Brocquy, exhibition catalogue Studies Towards an Image
of W. B. Yeats, 1975 (Dublin: The Dawson Gallery, November 26 - 13
December 1975).
207 John Russell, 'Introduction', Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stroughton 1982),
p. 15.
208 John Montague, preface, exhibition catalogue, Louis le Brocquy,
A la Recherche de W. B. Yeats (Paris: Musée d'Art Moderne de
la Ville de Paris, October 15 - 28 November 1976). Etudes Irlandaises,
C.E.R.I.U.L., Lille 1977. Exhibition catalogue, Louis le Brocquy, Images,
1975-1987 (Dublin: The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and
the Cultural Relations Committee, September - October 1987).
209 Dorothy Walker, 'Art from Three Cities', Hibernia (Dublin, December
12, 1975).
210 Anne Yeats, Irish Times (Dublin: December 1, 1976), reprinted
from 'Yeats au cent portraits', Quotidien de Paris (November 7,
1976), p. 11.
211 Geneviève Breerette (trans.), 'Le Brocquy a la recherche de
Yeats', Le Monde (Paris, November 10, 1976),p. 21.
212 Anne Madden le Brocquy, Louis le Brocquy: A Painter Seeing his Way (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994), p. 205.
213 Louis le Brocquy, 'The Human Head: Notes on Painting & Awareness',
18th Distinguished International Department Lecture, Royal College of Surgeons
in Ireland (Dublin, 14 November 2005) Edited from Actes du Colloque 'Corps-Poésie-Peinture', Faculté des Lettres de Nice Métaphores, No. 5
(Nice, February 8, 1979). Reproduced in Louis le Brocquy, 'Notes on painting
and awareness,' Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River
Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982).
214 Le Brocquy, letter to Francis Bacon dated December 1976 (Francis Bacon
Studio Archive, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane).
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Image of W. B. Yeats, 1975
oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm. A.R.392.
Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art
Image of W. B. Yeats, 1975
oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm, AR385
Image of W. B. Yeats, 1975
watercolour, 22 x 18 cm, A.R.W181
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