The early paintings culminate in Finale (1945),
and Condemned Man (1945). Alistair Smith notes: 'le Brocquy's interest
in expressing a more general predicament had emerged. To do so, he developed
a manner based on Synthetic Cubism. Its adoption by le Brocquy at this
moment was more than simply an updating of his source material beyond the
French nineteenth century. It was a coded act of faith in Picasso. While
the Catalan artist had developed Synthetic Cubism as early as 1913, le
Brocquy had in mind his more recent opposition to the forces of Nazism
and his work treating the destruction of Guernica in 1938 ... The Cubist
style itself had among others, been outlawed in Hitler's denunciation and
censorship of "Entartete Kunst", by which he meant everything
forward-looking, avant garde, and as it turned out, jewish in art. To employ
the Cubist style in the war era was, quite simply, a declaration of belief
in freedom itself.'52 Thesecompositions foreshadow the artist's 'Grey
Period' that will contemplate a starkhuman circumstance in
the aftermath of the World War II. John Russell notes: 'As to that, le
Brocquy had got the temper of the times just right as early as 1945, when
he painted his "Condemned Man", walled up in what looked like
granite, with again a bare bulb overhead.'53 The artist acquiesces: 'Condemned
Man is a rather grey painting and does seem to anticipate A Family some six years later ... As I remember, the prisoner in the painting
is seen through a darkened window. The cat on the move between the bars
was, I suppose, an image of freedom - as is the minute figure on the horizon.
The floral arrangement at the bottom right, I remember, suggests the head
of an absent woman.'54 Le Brocquy's reflection on prison conditions in
general and Capital Punishment in particular - views he shared with his
parents who were personally informed in unpleasant detail by the medical
doctor who had to supervise Pierpoint's duties as executioner, following
his arrival on the Dun Laoghaire mailboat - will lead him to become a member
of the Howard League for Penal Reform, campaigning in London in the fifties,
and, later, a lifelong supporter of Amnesty International. First hand knowledge
of prison conditions is gained through his friend Earnán O'Malley
of whom he observes: 'As an idealistic Republican, he commanded the rebel
forces in the southern area. Eventually he was captured, tortured by the
Black and Tans and went on hunger strike (during which he told me his favorite
reading was Mrs. Beaton's Cookery Book!). Ernie emerged from all this as
totally free of all bitterness and resentment as those other heroes Mahatma
Gandi and Nelson Mandela.'55 According to Alistair Smith: 'It was his feelings
about the injustice meted out to certain sections of Irish society which
engaged him, and which received expression in the majority of his paintings of
the time.'56 As Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith notes: 'While le
Brocquy's art has never been primarily an art of overt social commentary
or engagement, social concerns are indeed evident in some of the early
work.'57 In face of the poverty and slum conditions reaching into the heart
of his home city, the artist produces numerous sketches, including Starved
Children: Dublin Poor, In Death, Dublin Newsboy, Keening a Dead Baby, Woman
in Grief, Dublin Slum Children. Anticipating the tinker paintings inspired
in Co. Offaly a few months later, le Brocquy recalls: 'The deadly poverty,
child mortality statistically worse than Calcutta. The long fingers of
the slums, reaching from the north side into Stephen's Green where boys
in bare feet sold newspapers in all weathers for as long as they managed
to stay alive.'58 Second studio exhibition at 13 Merrion Row, Dublin (April
1945): Sketches and Studies, ninety-six works, including A Child
Anticipates a Woman's Shawl, Deserted Cottage, Galway Children, Connemara Scene, Figures in Moonlight, Connemara Fisherman, Emblaghmore, Ballyconneely, Púcán. Arthur
Power writes in The Irish Times: 'He has the delicacy of the orientals
and, in his figures, the realism of the modern painters, yet underneath
lies a firm structure. His constant search is for beauty, whether it be
in the abstraction of "Nightfall" or "Bog Stones,"
or in the more realistic "Gathering Kelp". Sensitive and, at
times, fugitive - too much so, perhaps - he has been attracted to many
themes, some of which are dealt with more fully than others. But in everything
he does he is a master of his technique, and this exhibition is one of
the most interesting we have seen.'59 In the summer of 1945, the artist
travels to the Midlands, where he is to discover his most powerful source
of inspiration to date. The war over, a number
of journalists, photographers and art dealers arrive in Ireland. Le Brocquy
is spotted by Ernest Brown & Pat Phillips of the Leicester Galleries,
Maurice Collis of The Observer, Lee Miller of American
Vogue. Enters Head of Niall Scott (1945), Madonna and Child (1945), Witch
and Familiar (1945), Finale (1945), Condemned Man (1945), into the 'Living Art' of 1945. Edward Sheehy writes in The
Dublin Magazine: 'If the Irish Exhibition is to become a regular annual
feature, it will certainly outdo the Academy in significance if not in
popularity ... The oils Finale and Condemned Man, by Louis
le Brocquy, amply fulfil the promise of his recent exhibition of sketches
and water-colours. Both pictures use practically identical colour harmonies,
little more than subtle modifications of white, to produce quite different
moods. Both show an extraordinary sensibility of line, used, however, with
an eye to the final architecture of the picture. His Master Niall Scott shows how effective a portrait can be where the painter is not trying to
rival either the photographer or the beauty-specialist.'59bis Meets Charles
Gimpel, the London art dealer destined to become an important advocate of the artist and his
work.
52 Alistair Smith, 'Louis le Brocquy: On the Spiritual
in Art', exhibition catalogue Louis le Brocquy, Paintings 1939 - 1996, (Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, October 1996 - February 1997), p.
24.
53 John Russell, 'Introduction', Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p.
9.
54 Louis le Brocquy, notes, Louis le Brocquy, The Inner Human Reality,
Film documentary directed by Joe Mulholland, RTE 1, Arts Lives, 21 February
2006, 22.15pm.
55 Anne Crookshank, Introduction, exhibition catalogue, Louis le Brocquy:
A Retrospective Selection of Oil Paintings 1939-1966 (Dublin: The Municipal
Gallery of Modern Art; Belfast: Ulster Museum, November 1966 - January
1967), p. 8.
56 Alistair Smith, 'Louis le Brocquy: On the Spiritual in Art', exhibition
catalogue Louis le Brocquy, Paintings 1939 - 1996, (Dublin: Irish
Museum of Modern Art, October 1996 - February 1997), p. 24.
57 Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, 'The Human Image Paintings
of Louis le Brocquy', 2003.
58 Louis le Brocquy, notes, Louis le Brocquy, The Inner Human Reality,
Film documentary directed by Joe Mulholland, RTE 1, Arts Lives, 21 February
2006, 22.15pm.
59 Arthur Power, friend of Joyce and Beckett, The Irish Times (Dublin,
April 23, 1945).
59bis Edward Sheehy, 'Art Notes', The Dublin Magazine (Dublin, Oct-Dec 1945).
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Condemned Man, 1945
oil on gesso-primed hardboard, 91 x 69 cm
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