The Art of a Nation

While I do enjoy visiting art galleries, I would not consider myself to be any kind of authority on Irish Art, which is why I have hesitated to write this Blog. Throughout my life, I have tended to draw on Irish writing as an artistic guide to the country of my birth, upbringing and undying affection.

Being involved with 'The Art of a Nation' exhibition at London's Mall Galleries has, however, encouraged me to ask the question, does Irish Art convey a specific sense of Ireland in the way that our poets, novelists and dramatists do?

This exhibition consists of 70 works from the collection of the Allied Irish Banks, pieces skilfully acquired since 1980, and from Cork's Crawford Art Gallery. It is an excellent display of the best of modern Irish Art with works by most of our leading 20th century artists.

Like our writers, many of the artists featured here lived part of their lives outside Ireland and were influenced by international movements in the visual arts. Grace Henry paints like a Post-Impressionist, but there is, I would say, something distinctively Irish about her work. Its special character comes, as much of the art in this exhibition does, from the landscape of the west of Ireland, and from the people who live there.

Wherever we come from in Ireland, most Irish people feel a special affinity with the west of Ireland. The work of Grace's husband, Paul Henry, has had an enduring impact on the way we view the natural beauty of our mountains and lakes, the dramatic scenery of what Tourism Ireland now calls 'The Wild Atlantic Way.'

Jack B. Yeats is probably our most renowned 20th century painter, with a style all of his own. Unlike his brother, the poet, WB, who moved regularly between Dublin, Sligo and London, Jack B spent 7 years of his childhood living with his maternal grandparents in Sligo and came back to Ireland in 1910 where he lived until his death in 1957. His life was deeply anchored in Ireland. He once observed that everything he ever painted had a bit of Sligo in it.

The thing that impresses me about Jack B is the manner in which his style was transformed during his lifetime. He started as an illustrator and then a painter in a naturalistic style before evolving into the modernist painter now so widely admired. In this sense, he matched his older brother's evolution from the poet of the 'bee loud glade' in the 1890s to one who wrote of 'the foul rag and bone shop of the heart' in the 1930s.

There is a Jack B painting entitled 'The Man of Arranmore' (not in this exhibition), which echoes WB's depiction of The Fisherman in his 'grey Connemara clothes.' His major work in this exhibition, 'Now or never' is reminiscent of his brother's poem 'The Circus Animals Desertion', except that the Irish horse is its subject. His brush strokes convey the vibrancy of rural Ireland, especially when horses are involved. Even the prominence of black in the painting does not give the scene a gloomy feel. His is a happy black! Basil Blackshaw continues the equestrian theme with a fine painting of a Steeplechase, 'Showing them the first fence.'

I am glad that another feature of Irish sporting life gets an airing in Marie Foley's 'Ancient Hurley'. This reflects the importance of Gaelic Games in modern Ireland. The GAA, a late-19th century creation, has been a singular shaper of Irish identity this past 100 years. It has defied the odds by maintaining our traditional games as Ireland's most popular sports and retaining an amateur ethos while filling stadiums and capturing the public imagination.

For me, the two most resonant works in this exhibition are Sean Keating's 'On the Run: the War of Independence 1921' and Shane Blount's 'It's a Blue Giraffe'.

Keating's painting is the visual counterpart to Yeats's poems and O'Casey's plays about the years of upheaval in Ireland between 1916 and 1923. The characters, and that's what they are, in this painting are neither the 1916 Rising's leaders 'transformed utterly' as in Yeats's verse, nor history's victims, Juno Boyle and the many other working class Dubliners in O'Casey's plays. These figures do have 'vivid faces', but it is their stoic determination that comes across. Even on the run, they dress properly, with collar and tie. They are neither heroes nor anti-heroes, just individuals caught in the moment while history's wheel turns all around them - unseen, but both imagined and real.

Shane Blount's painting is a depiction of today's Ireland. This work shows a country that has come a long way from the scene in 'Claddagh Market, Galway' depicted by Grace Henry, or Sean Keating's 'West of Ireland Quayside with Figures' or Lilian Davidson's 'Claddagh Harbour'. The boy at the centre of this painting, with his track suit and tee-shirt, is a child of a new Ireland coping with the elemental sadness of bereavement.

The burden of Irish history is also well represented, with a number of reminders of the Great Famine of the 1840s, most notably the bronze, 'Ghost Famine Ship' by John Behan, and of the Northern Ireland conflict, evoked in Willie Doherty's 'Border Road', but these troubled images are balanced by the bright, breeziness of Harry Kernoff's paintings of Dublin in the 1940s captured at a time when darkness enveloped the world.

This exhibition is a must-see for anyone with an interest in Ireland. It recounts a tale of a people, a society, a history and a landscape that 'words alone' cannot tell!

The exhibition runs until 29 May. If you miss it, do visit Cork's Crawford Gallery the next time you are in Ireland.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London