Moves studio, converted garage, Hollyberry House, 'The Watch House',
Holly Hill, Hampstead (Spring 1950). Embarks on the 'Grey Period' Family paintings (c.1951-54), the third distinctive period in the artist's work.
According to John Russell: 'In the early 1950's, above all, he came before
us as a man who was looking for the image that would compound all other
images. Anyone who was around at the time and concerned with what was called"post-war
British art" will remember the painting called "A Family"
(1951; National Gallery, Ireland).'91 Widely acknowledged as the artist's
masterpiece from the period, the painting marks a shift in palette from
the comparatively colourful work of the late forties topredominant whites
and greys. John Berger writes in Art News and Review: 'His style
has developed and changed; his colours are pale and severe - the Family is mostly grey; his forms, in their movement both across and into the picture,
are precise. This finesse implies - because le Brocquy's motive is always
human - a tenderness which is not sentimental, and a sense of wonder which
is exact; one thinks twice aboutthe quite ordinary but in fact miraculous
construction of any man's back, having looked at the father in the Family.
Le Brocquy is completely free of contemporary tendency to cosmic megalomania.
It has become pretentious to talk of an artist's humility, yet that is
what distinguishes his work; his studies testify to his patience, and his
final, large picture to his refusal to evade simple but difficult problems
by relying on the grandiose cliché.'92 Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch
notes of this large composition:'An oil on canvas, almost two metres wide
the picture depicts a family group ... The mother, lying on a table, leaning
on one arm, stares out with quiet dignity while a menacing looking cat
peers out from beneath the drawn sheet. In the background the father sits,
head bowed, in a pose suggesting total dejection. He appears to be oblivious to the
small child holding a bunch of flowers; a symbol of hope. The three sombrely
painted figures inhabit a grey concrete bunker, lit by a bare bulb. The
theme of this disturbingly bleak work is the nature of individual isolation
and the breakdown of societal norms.'93 Conceived in the wake of World
War II, the artist explains: 'I have always been fascinated by the horizontal
monumentality of traditional Odalisque painting, the reclining woman depicted
voluptuously by one Master after another throughout the history of European
art - Titians' Venus of Urbino, Velasquez' Roqueby Venus turning her back on the Spanish Court, Goya's Maja clothed and unclothed,
Ingres' Reclining Odalisque in her seraglio and finally the great Olympia of Edouard Manet celebrating his favourite model, Victorine
Meurent. My own painting A Family was conceived in 1950 in very
different circumstances in face of the atomic threat, social upheaval and
refugees of World War II and its aftermath. The elements in its composition
correspond in some ways to those of Olympia, if not to Manet's cool
sensuality. The female figure in A Family may be seen to take on
a very different significance. The man, replacing Manet's black servant
with bouquet, sits alone. The bouquet
is reduced to a mere wisp held by a child.The Olympian black cat in turn
becomes white, ominously emerging from the sheets. This is how A Family appears to me today. Fifty years ago it was painted while contemplating
a human condition stripped back to Palaeolithic circumstance under electric
light bulbs.'94 The painting will prompt John Berger to declare in The
New Statesman: 'The right-hand half of the very large Family group is, by itself, the finest bit of contemporary painting I have seen
for a long time, and I am now convinced that le Brocquy is one of the really
promising (in this case that infuriating word is not an excuse but an achievement)
British [sic] painters of his generation.'95 Paints Indoors Outdoors (1951), Bathers (1951; Dept. Forign Affairs, Dublin), Child with
Flowers (1951), Man Writing (1951), Man with Towel (1951), Woman in White (1951). According to Alistair Smith: 'The key painting
of the group is entitled A Sickness (1951) which may owe something
to the composition of early works by Munch, where, very often, a figure
broods in the foreground over what is happening behind. Here we are witness
to two women, one seated and caring, the other near death, floating within
sheets. In the other pictures of the grey series, the mood is of pervading
melancholy. Despite the persistent quotation of elements from Picasso's
Pink Period - the bouquets of flowers, the sparse interiors and the similar "intervals"
between the figures - there is nothing of the sweetness of that part of
Picasso's oeuvre. Le Brocquy has moved from a perception of his Irish travellers
as outcasts, who thereby possessed a preternatural vitality, to an understanding
of dismal entrapped, post-war urban society, refugees included.'96 Tapestry
design takes on a distinct attractiveness for an artist whose palette has
become essentially confined. The medium offers an unbounded outlet to le
Brocquy's feelings for colour. He explains: 'I always found it a kind of
recreation, involving completely different problems. The method I use is
a system of notation, a linear design which is numbered in the colours
of a range of wools. Although one can visualise what one is doing, to a
certain extent, when the tapestry is palpably there this causes an independent
birth of something - a surprise - and that is so contrary to the whole
involved process of painting that it is rather refreshing.'97 Designs three
related tapestries commissioned by Mrs S. H. Stead-Ellis, adapted as screen,
rug, and fire screen. Woven by Golden Targe Studio, Edinburgh, the series
includes Cherub (1951), recalling the 'Apocalyptic' paintings of
1948; Eden (1951), based on a series of subdivisions of the Golden
Mean, and Adam and Even in the Garden (1951), stylistically analogous
to his 'Grey Period' painting Man Writing (1951). Refered to as
the 'Eden Tapestries', the companion-piece Adam and Even in the Garden is adapted as a single piece with the three divisions of the Stead-Ellis
screen now pictorially replaced with the vertical inscriptions And the
eyes - of them both - were opened. The choice of subject-matter is
reflective rather than religious. Conceived allegorically, the artist explains:
'I chose as the theme for these tapestries the astonishing legend of Adam
and Eve in the garden of Nature, of the awakening of human consciousness,
the birth of the mind.'98 Designs six further tapestries for Chippendale
chairs commissioned by Edward Rice, Oak, Sycamore, Horse Chestnut, Lime,
Beech, Ash, woven by Edinburgh Tapestry Co. (1951). Exhibition at Gimpel
Fils, London (June 1951): Drawings, Watercolours, Oils & Tapestries, thirty seven works, including Two Rooms (1951), Indoors-Outdoors (1951) A Family (1951). Eric Newton writes in The Listener:
'Louis le Brocquy is a haunted artist. It would be easy to praise the pale
delicacy of his colour and the angular simplicity of his line. But plenty
of contemporary painters have precisely those gifts - they threaten to
become rather tiresome cliché - yet cannot use them for any expressive
purpose. Le Brocquy breaths life into the modish idiom. The familiar tricks
become vehicles of a powerful vision. The recumbent woman,
the back view of a man, the small child holding a nosegay of flowers who
recur as a leitmotif in more than half the exhibits at Gimpel
Fils, are the raw material for a kind of sonnet in paint, polished and
rearranged and played with until it appears in at least eight different
disguises ... Le Brocquy's exhibition establishes him as a lyrical artist
with an exceptional evocative gift.'99 Represented in Sixty Paintings
for '51, Arts Council, Festival of Britain, London (July 1951), Les
Tendances d'Avant-Garde dans la Peinture Britanique, Brussels, Belgium
(July 1951), le Brocquy prepares for his first gallery exhibion in Ireland
at the Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin (December 1951): Paintings
and Tapestries, including Negro Woman in White (1951), Child
with Doll (1951). John Ryan writes in the Dublin Evening Mail:
'Louis le Brocquy discovered his peculiarly individual mode of expression
early in his career and courageously employed it even when doing so meant
that he had to discard a style which promised a fashionable and lucrative
future as a portrait painter in the traditional manner. That pedestrian
opinion has not forgiven him for this revolt against its standards was
amply proved by the deplorable attack on the painter inthe Evening Herald recently. Le Brocquy's stand and his subsequent development as an artist,
however, won him the admiration and respect of intelligent opinion wherever
his work has been shown. In great Britain he is accepted as one of the
handful of really brilliant painters of this generation, while America
in so far as she has had the opportunity to judge has reacted similarly.
Despite the strictures of the Evening Herald it is satisfactory
to note that the exhibition itself has been an outstanding success in every
respect.'100 In February 1952, A Family will elicit much debate
when a group of art patrons offer to present the painting to the Dublin
Municipal Gallery100b. The gift is rejected by the Art Advisory Committee at
the behest of Sean Keating on the grounds of incompetence. The Dublin Corporation
members are in the affirmative minority. The decision sparks widespread
controversy and extensive media coverage. Ineffectual protests are led
by fellow artists in the IELA Committee, within a small dynamic group supporting
contemporary art. The event mobilises modern art haters. Open hostility
is aired in letters sent to the press. Viewed as an 'unwholesome and satanic
distortion of natural beauty'101, and 'bewildering and repulsive'102, the
aversion is summed up in the following opinion published by the Dublin
Evening Mail: 'There is a place for monstrosities in the College of
Surgeons - there are plenty there - and it would give me much pleasure
to find a place for things like "The Family" ... It is not given
to man to see into the future, but I am quite certain that in another 100
years the works of Turner, Constable, and a Galaxy of true artists, whose
work is still with us, will be cherished and admired, while things like
"The Family" will have returned to the oblivion from which they
never should have emerged.'103 The painting will receive international
acclaim at the Venice Biennale in 1956, and be given historical recognition
in Cinquante Ans d'Art Moderne, held to be one of the most ambitious
attempts to trace and
categorise the development of painting and sculpture from Cézanne
and Rodin to date (World Fair, Brussels, 1958). Le Brocquy's A Family will eventually return from Italy some fifty years later to be displayed
in the National Gallery of Ireland. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch will
observe on this occasion: 'Le Brocquy is the only living artist to have
a work on show as part of the permanent collection. As Medb Ruane has pointed
out, the prophet has finally been honoured in his own land.'104 This outcome
will not come without further trials and tribulations in the painting's
history. Anne Madden recounts: [In 1966] 'After lengthy negotiations, A
Family [coll. Prealpina S.P.A., Milan] was borrowed for the le Brocquy
retrospective exhibition from the Nestlé Prealpina collection in
Milan. It travelled by boat and was delivered from the Dublin quays to
the Municipal Gallery just in time for the opening of the exhibition. On
opening it, water sluiced out onto the floor of the Gallery ... The artist
was advised, as was a Mr Bull, conservator to the Tate Gallery, London.
After careful examination, Mr Bull pronounced portions of the painting
irreparable and he returned to London ... another expert, John Fitzmaurice
Mills, volunteered to effect restoration. In a few days, he phoned Louis
to say the work was completed. Louis was astonished as he walked through
the door of the appointed room in the Municipal Gallery. There was the
painting, as fresh as before. But as he approached it, his heart sank.
The paint was a caricature of itself. He said not a word but, perceiving
his reserve, Fitzmaurice Mills assured Louis that the paint applied by
him had been diluted with retouching varnish, and was thus removable. Removed
it was ... arrangements were made for the shipment to France. In the meantime,
the painting was placed alone in a room for its safe-keeping. A house painter
entered the room, and fell over an unseen bucket full of white distemper,
spattering it over the surface of A Family, while projecting the
ladder he was carrying through the canvas. Since Louis was not restoring
but repainting the work freely, a difference is perceptible, the older
painter imparting additional vigour to the injured passages which are none
the less integrated within the whole painting. Apart from inadvertent assault,
A Family had now survived both official rejection and prolonged immersion.'105
NEXT
91 John Russell, 'Introduction', Dorothy Walker, Louis
le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton
1982), p. 9.
92 John Berger, 'Distinguished Humility', Art News and Review (London.
June 16, 1951).
93 Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, 'Louis le Brocquy's A Family :
"An unwholesome and satanic distortion of natural beauty" CIRCA
Art Magazine (online magazine, 2002).
94 Louis le Brocquy, 'A Family', Address on the occasion of the installation
of the painting in the collection o the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin,
May 27, 2002).
95 John Berger, 'Distinguished Humility', Art News and Review (London.
June 16, 1951).
96 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. 33.
97 Harriet Cooke, 'Harriet Cooke Talks to Louis le Brocquy', The Irish
Times (Dublin, 25 May 1973).
98 Statement made to the editor, August 2005.
99 Eric Newton, 'Round the London Art Galleries', The Listener (London,
June 14, 1951).
100 John Ryan, 'The Louis le Brocquy Exhibition', Our Nation (Dublin,
January 1952).
100b Victor Waddington suggests to the Friends of the National Collections in Ireland (FNCI) to purchase the painting for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (now Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane). FNCI/03/03. Box 16, National Irish Visual Art Library archives.
101 "Verdad", 'The Family', letter to the editor, The Irish
Times (Dublin, March 6, 1952).
102 M.A.T., Dublin Evening Mail (March 13, 1952).
103 'Tomtom", 'Paintings of "The Moderns", letter to the
editor, Dublin Evening Mail (March 20, 1952).
104 Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, 'Louis le Brocquy's A Family :
"An unwholesome and satanic distortion of natural beauty" CIRCA
Art Magazine (online magazine, 2002).
105 Anne Madden le Brocquy, Louis le Brocquy: A Painter Seeing his Way (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994), pp. 167-68.
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A Family, 1951
oil on canvas, 147 x 185 cm
National Gallery of Ireland
Man Writing, 1951
oil on canvas, 62.5 x 76 cm
Merrion Hotel, Dublin
Adam and Eve in the Garden, 1951-52
Aubusson tapestry, 140 x 275 cm
Atelier Tabard Frères et Soeurs, edition 9
Eden, 1952
Aubusson tapestry, 110 x 180 cm
Atelier Tabard Frères et Soeurs, edition 9
Cherub, 1952
Aubusson tapestry, 110 x 140 cm
Atelier Tabard Frères et Soeurs, edition 9
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