These are notes towards a review of Irish Horse – an exhibition scheduled to run at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) from the 25th April to the 16th August 2020. Sadly the exhibition has been cancelled for obvious reasons. The catalogue however will be printed and these notes are based on a PDF of the draft catalogue. I have only seen a few of the works in the flesh.
Curator Brendan Rooney states in the exhibition catalogue that “Horses and art are inherently suited to one another”. And yet up to the advent of Jack B. Yeats, there’s a singular lack of paintings of merit by Irish artists that feature the horse in other than a peripheral role. Rooney’s catalogue essay makes much of this dearth of native equine art – going back as far as the 18th Century. The Anglo-Irish ascendancy at that time were inclined to look to England if they wanted their four-legged heroes painted. In the 18th Century Lord Clanbrassil enlisted George Stubbs when he wanted to immortalize his great hunter Mowbray, an example followed by Robert Gregory of Coole Park and many others. We hear of a couple of indigenous artists, Robert Healy and Thomas Roberts, who showed promise in this area in the 18th Century but sadly both died in their twenties. Perhaps they would have been our Stubbs and Munnings.
Ireland has long had an affinity with the horse – especially through the exploits of our racing heroes such as Arkle and Nijinsky (see image with Lester Piggott on board), and their fabled trainers Tom Dreaper and Vincent O’Brien. Our show-jumpers and our breeding operations are also renowned throughout the world. But racing doesn’t seem to need fine art. After every big race triumph a ritual takes place in the parade ring whereby the owner, trainer, jockey, groom and winning horse are photographed for posterity. This tableaux seems to be sufficient record for all concerned. There are of course exceptions: Tony O’Connor’s fine portraits of Galileo and Sea the Stars and sculptures such as Emma McDermot’s bronze of Ridgewood Pearl at the Curragh and John Behan’s Arkle surrounded by triumphant supporters at Galway Racecourse. Peter Curling is the best-known specialist equine artist at work here and although his rather bucolic paintings are successful commercially, he seems to operate in a realm outside the contemporary Irish art scene – seen perhaps as a genre painter and side-lined accordingly. O’Connor is a less well-known but Unique, his vibrant horse study in this exhibition, should garner the Cork-based artist a host of new admirers.
The noticeably high proportion of non-Irish artists in the exhibition highlights this historical indifference of Irish artists towards the horse. However, the 20th century brought two artists who have made up for this disappointing situation: Jack B. Yeats and Basil Blackshaw. Both, tellingly, grew up amongst horses. Yeats spent his childhood summers in Sligo where he had access to the stables of his uncle George Pollexfen and nearby Bowmore racecourse, while Blackshaw’s father was a trainer and he spent most of his life amongst sporting folk in rural Antrim. There are seven works by Yeats in the show with the early representational works of horses going about their business predominating as in The Swinford Funeral and The Mail Car. On the Racecourse, Sligo presents an unusual jockey-cam perspective of the racecourse as seen from behind the horse’s head. The later Yeats is meagerly represented with a 1937 work referencing Bianconi and his 1948 painting Let ‘em Go and Take Care of Yourself. Overall it’s a rather prosaic selection with none of those magical, high-spirited creatures you see in Freedom, On to Glory or The Proud Galloper. (Or the very late painting My Beautiful showing the bond between man and horse – a painting only a true horse lover could have achieved.)
Blackshaw’s three works include The Fall a dramatic and energetic rendition of a horse and jockey parting company. He is also responsible for the very beautiful and atmospheric Tommy Orr, Blacksmith. The horse and farrier almost blending in the steam-filled smithy. In more recent times Laurence Riddell has produced a series of works that convey the grace and energy of horses in motion – as in Corporeal Space (VI), a painting of a horse lunging. Compare the energy and audacity of this work with John Lavery’s sun-dappled idyll of the same subject (Schooling the Pony). His striking photographic montage on the cover of the catalogue (Provenance II) is a work for the Kildangan Stud with a background that playfully nods towards George Stubbs. Martin Gale is yet another Irish artist with a racing pedigree. His father was a successful jockey and in his childhood was educated alongside Vincent O’Brien’s children while his father worked at Ballydoyle. He resisted the call of his equine origins for many years but in recent time has painted a series called Bloodlines, one of which figures in the show. Like Riddell, he juxtaposes a modern race horse with the now anachronistic representations of George Stubbs.
Blackshaw’s three works include The Fall a dramatic and energetic rendition of a horse and jockey parting company. He is also responsible for the very beautiful and atmospheric Tommy Orr, Blacksmith. The horse and farrier almost blending in the steam-filled smithy. In more recent times Laurence Riddell has produced a series of works that convey the grace and energy of horses in motion – as in Corporeal Space (VI), a painting of a horse lunging. Compare the energy and audacity of this work with John Lavery’s sun-dappled idyll of the same subject (Schooling the Pony). His striking photographic montage on the cover of the catalogue (Provenance II) is a work for the Kildangan Stud with a background that playfully nods towards George Stubbs. Martin Gale is yet another Irish artist with a racing pedigree. His father was a successful jockey and in his childhood was educated alongside Vincent O’Brien’s children while his father worked at Ballydoyle. He resisted the call of his equine origins for many years but in recent time has painted a series called Bloodlines, one of which figures in the show. Like Riddell, he juxtaposes a modern race horse with the now anachronistic representations of George Stubbs.
There are three works by William Orpen – all very different. Racing historians will be drawn to his painting of Sergeant Murphy. He was not an Irish horse, being bred in the USA, but he distinguished himself by winning the Grand National at the age of 13 – still a record. He continued racing until the unheard of age of 17 and died in action at the old Bogside racecourse. Although he had no interest in being a painter of horses, Orpen reckoned he could do it as well as any specialist, such as his acquaintance and contemporary Alfred Munnings. His depiction of Sergeant Murphy contains the figure of Munnings leaning against a tree admiring his rivals’s handiwork. The Baldoyle Steeplechaser is a jokey self-portrait of Orpen dressed as a jockey. The jutting lower lip exaggerates a feature that was often the source of unkind comments about his appearance. The picture, he told his mistress (Mrs. St. George), is “as I appeared to myself when I got home last night.” Orpen’s third work, The Knackers Yard, leaves all jokes aside. It is a disturbing depiction of what happens to horses when their racing or working days are over. In the Dublin of his time the average life expectancy of these poor beasts of burden was three years. A shocking statistic when you consider that a well-treated horse can live into its late twenties. Orpen of course also saw the slaughter of horses during the First World War when he was a war artist. There’s another disturbing image of an abused horse in Father Browne’s Fallen Horse, O’Connell Bridge.
The two best known painters of horses in these islands, George Stubbs and Alfred Munnings, are included. This is the same Munnings that claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso had “corrupted art”. While both artists are British, their paintings in this exhibition feature Irish subjects - Munnings was a regular visitor to Ireland and often spent time in Kilkenny in the company of renowned hunter Isaac “Ikey” Bell. These days many of Munnings’ horse portraits rest in the company of John Magnier of Coolmore Stud who has a major collection of his work. Stubbs portrait of Lord Clanbrassil’s magnificent hunter Mowbray has an Arcadian setting and an artificial feel – and the pasty-faced Clanbrassil looks far less healthy than his horse. Munnings’ Kilkenny Horse Fair gets down amongst the hoi polloi, albeit with the addition of a scenic ruined castle.
Curator Rooney has cast his net very wide so there are bound to be a few inclusions that could have been rejected without causing any diminution in quality or interest. (John Hutton’s set of six designs for coaches seems a whimsical addition – hardly art and hardly horse.) But conversely he has included some exotic and interesting figures that many would not connect with the Irish horse, or indeed Irish art. How many are familiar with Lutz Dille, Erich Hartmann and Elliot Erwitt? Or Ernest Albert Waterlow? Erwitt, now in his 90s, may be known to lovers of rock music as he has regularly worked with The Rolling Stones and was still photographer on Bob Dylan’s No Direction Home. He came to Ireland in 1962 and did a series of anthropological studies of the Irish – time capsules now of the way we were. His focus was people although dogs and occasionally horses also featured. Lutz Dille started his photography career in the German Army during the Second World War – working on reconnaissance. He later moved to Canada where he became a successful documentary photographer. His forte was people he encountered on his travels and he did a series in Ireland in from which Ireland, 1968 is taken – a bleak image of a horse and cart in a coal yard. Ernest Waterlow is yet another British painter – his Galway Gossips from the Tate Collection is less a celebration of the Irish Horse and more a condescending take on us rural Irish primitives. Punch would have been proud of it. Photography is very well represented and we get a taste of those who participated in the old Smithfield Horse Market from Perry Ogden. Sculpture is best represented by Conor Fallon’s elegant polished steel Horse, 1986.
The NGI does like to divide exhibitions into divisions that can be aligned with the gallery’s layout. These are often chronological and usually make practical sense but the Irish Horse’s ones seem somewhat contrived: Portraits/People/Sport/The Everyday/Symbol. For example, Orpen’s portrait of Sergeant Murphy could fit into at least three of these categories. And do we really need four of Spencer Murphy’s jockey photographs – all of contemporary riders? The splendid one of a mud-splattered and pissed-off looking Ruby Walsh would have sufficed. And surely there must be images somewhere of past heroes such as Pat Taafe and Pat Eddery? Not to mention Arkle and Nijinsky.
But this is a very democratic horse show. We get more put-upon beasts of burden than preening champions of the racecourse or the show ring.
John P. O’Sullivan
April 2020
