Henry Jones Thaddeus Brendan Rooney Four Courts 2003 pp336 h/b E45.00 cased only Ills col 40 & ills b/w 80 ISBN 1-85182-692-0 Peter Murray Feted and honoured in his own day, an artist who lived an extraordinary and peripatetic existence, Henry Jones Thaddeus had, by the latter half of the 20th century been virtually forgotten. His achievements, which included having his first major painting hung ‘on the line’ in the Paris Salon, receiving two papal portrait commissions and being elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in recognition of his intrepid travels, were recalled only in a long out-of-print autobiography Recollections of a Court Painter, written during the artist’s retirement in California. The rediscovery of this Cork-born painter came about twenty years ago, primarily through the work of art historian Julian Campbell, whose investigations into the careers of Irish artists working in France in the late 19th century resulted in the ground-breaking 1984 ‘Irish Impressionists’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland. The title of the exhibition, while not strictly accurate, caught the public imagination. Many of the artists were not Impressionists in the true sense of the word - apart from Roderic O’Conor, they tended to adhere to the darker palette of Courbet, and the Realists, the pale tones of Bastien Lepage in Brittany or the autumnal colours of the Northern French and Belgian schools. The Irish studying at the Academie Royale in Antwerp and at ateliers in Paris in the 1880s were the outstanding students of their day. After the Metropolitan School in Dublin or the Crawford in Cork, a year in France was seen as essential for any ‘serious’ artist. However, by the time Campbell commenced his researches, many of the names recorded in the atelier roll-books, Thaddeus’s among them, had faded into obscurity. While Walter Osborne, J M Kavanagh and Nathaniel Hone enjoyed continuing popularity, works by lesser-known artists appeared rarely in sales rooms and galleries and were often overlooked. A painting by Thaddeus, La retour du bracconier or The Wounded Poacher, lent by a private collector in the Hague to the Irish Impressionists exhibition, was acquired soon afterwards by the National Gallery of Ireland. An extraordinarily accomplished work, this was the painting that had been shown at the Paris Salon in 1881. It aroused considerable interest, as the artist was so little known. Two years later, the Gorry Gallery showed the 1882 painting Market Day, Finistere, another ambitious early painting by Thaddeus which was also acquired by the National Gallery. Over the following decade, the Gorry Gallery showed a number of other works by Thaddeus, including On the Sands, Concarneau (1881) Breton Fisher Boy (1881), and Spilt Milk. This new book on Harry Jones Thaddeus by Brendan Rooney therefore is long overdue and is to be welcomed. The book is the result of a doctoral thesis completed by Rooney some years ago. It takes research into émigré Irish artists to a new level, not only in terms of the detail the author brings to his account of the life and work of his subject, but also in his willingness to restrain from judgment when discussing some later works by Thaddeus. Like too many Irish artists, at the outset of his career Thaddeus seemed destined for a permanent place in the pantheon of great European artists. Fired with the example of James Barry and Daniel Maclise, he dreamed of painting masterpieces in the European Grand Manner (Figs 1&2). However, the promise of his early works, painted in Paris and in Concarneau in the early 1880s, largely evaporated as the vain and impressionable young artist was taken up by a group of British expatriates living in Florence. Up to this point, Rooney’s narrative is essentially a reiteration of material already written about the Academie Julian, Heatherley’s Academy, the plein air tradition in France and the lure of Brittany, with its picturesque towns and traditions. However, with the arrival of Thaddeus in Florence in 1881, his meeting with the Duke and Duchess of Teck, and his entering a social scene that oscillated between Lake Constance and Florence with a colourful range of Russian and German aristocrats in attendance, Rooney’s account begins to read more like the synopsis of a novel by Thomas Mann or Henry James, than the life story of a minor portrait and genre painter. Indeed, there is a faint possibility that Thaddeus may have formed the inspiration for the main protagonist in George Moore’s novel A Modern Lover: A Realistic Novel, published in London in 1883. The novel however paints a picture of a artist who was a cad, whereas all accounts of Thaddeus point towards a person who was certainly vain and intemperate but whose character was essentially generous, kind and sentimental. Thaddeus’s unbounded confidence in his own abilities and importance, as recounted in his own memoirs, becomes tiresome. At the end of his life, to have produced a memoir, Recollections of a Court Painter that was partly a work of fiction, indicates that he was rarely willing to confront the truth about himself or his achievement. Rooney has at least set the record straight, through diligent research and clear and non-judgmental writing. It seems strange that such a fine book, well researched and well written, should be devoted to Thaddeus, when other artists such as Walter Osborne, incomparably more important in the general scheme of things, should still be awaiting a proper assessment and substantial publication. Peter Murray is curator of the Crawford Municipal Gallery of Art Cork.   ‘Our Treasure of Antiquities’: Beranger and Bigari’s Antiquarian Tour of Connaught in 1779. Peter Harbison Wordwell in association with the National Library of Ireland 2002 pp237 h/b e25 £18.95 Ills 24 col & ills b/w 214 ISBN 1869587 53 4 Michael McCarthy Published in association with the National Library of Ireland, this handsomely produced and well-printed volume may be viewed as the textual and visual culmination of Peter Harbison’s book on the drawings of Gabriel Beranger in 1991 and 1998, his Cooper’s Ireland, 2000 and his general article in the Irish arts Review of 2001, ‘Irish Artists on Irish Subjects’. Beranger seems to have been a Huguenot from Holland and Angelo Maria Bigari was an architect and scene-painter from Italy, so this book might well be titled European artists on Irish Subjects. The book combines 214 illustrations in black and white with text and commentary on 217 pages, and there are a further 24 half-page coloured illustrations. The quality of reproduction is excellent for drawings, engravings and watercolours and the interest of the book is enormously enhanced by the sharp clarity of photographs of the sites at present, the work for the most part of Josephine Shields. Tim O’ Neill has provided a helpful map of the sites, and reference material is completed with a detailed bibliography of each site and an index. There is no list of illustrations, but each is provided with an informative caption giving its call-number when appropriate. The author’s method is admirably comprehensive in combining the printed image with the drawn and painted images and the photographic, where the information is full, as in the case of the tower-house at Claddagh near Dunmore in County Galway (Figs 3&4). The elevation and plan in 1779 by Bigari in the National Library are complemented by engravings from the first volume of Grose’s Antiquities of Ireland, (1791-96). By this stage the scene had acquired staffage of a standing and recumbent male figure in the foreground. These reappear in the watercolour by an unknown hand in the Royal Hibernian Academy manuscript 3.C.29, the location of ten comparable watercolours. This leads the author to the conclusion that the paintings were the source of the engravings, whereas common sense suggests the reverse was true and the style of those watercolours is closer to the mid-19th century. In this case Josephine Shield’s photo is melancholy in revealing that the structure, the only tower-house to be depicted by the artists, has been levelled to the ground. But this points up the historical importance of the visual evidence here so carefully presented to us. Most of the material in the book is ecclesiastical in nature. Plans are not always available to clarify the elevations chosen, but they are supplied in most instances from Grose. Details of shrines, tombs and architectural features are noted when exceptional, and round towers are specially noted. But pre-Christian monuments are plotted and sketched and measured when visited and are reproduced here for the most part from J S Cooper’s copies after the lost originals of Beranger. They are testimony to the objectivity of the originator of the tour, William Burton Conygham of Slane and the short-lived Hibernian Antiquarian Society formed in 1779. The introductory chapter provides a narrative of the publishing history of this treasury of antiquities and its vicissitudes to the present, while the second chapter most helpfully sorts out the many sources from which the narrative to date can be reconstructed. Unfortunately the lively and engagingly written diary that Beranger wrote of this tour has been lost. But its high points were retold in the edition of the tour edited by William Wilde and Speranza in 1880, and it is supplemented here by information derived from letters of Beranger to Burton Conygham and others, to make as thorough and entertaining an edition of the tour as the present state of research allows. We are deeply indebted to Peter Harbison for his masterly presentation of such diverse material. Michael McCarthy is professor of the History of Art at University College, Dublin and author of The Origins of the Gothic Revival and editor of, and contributor to, Lord Charlemont and His Circle.   Gothic Art in Ireland, 1169-1550 Cormac Hourihane New Haven and London 2003 pp187 h/b Ills col 35 & ills b/w 170 e62.80 / £45 ISBN 0-300-09435-3 Lynda Mulvin Other than in the area of architecture, Gothic is a word that has not been easily applied to late medieval Irish art’. Colum Hourihane opens this present volume with a sense of anticipation relating to the task ahead as he sets out to investigate Gothic art in Ireland. This opening statement establishes a clear aim to concentrate on works of art rather than architecture and while it is difficult to imagine a work of this nature removed from the context of architecture, the photograph of the tower- house presented in the frontispiece of this book, an enduring image of late medieval Ireland, hints at his own awareness of this difficulty. In this beautifully produced book, he succeeds admirably in bridging the gap between architecture and art by organising the material around specific topics which allow the reader to better appreciate the depth and diversity of the development of Gothic art in Ireland. In doing so, the author demonstrates the richness of the art of this period from the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland until the Reformation. Traditionally, studies of the art works of this period tend to be individual studies on metalwork, sculpture or the decorative arts. Here the author has carefully compiled the collective evidence for Gothic art in Ireland, and the outcome is bound to please many readers with antiquarian interests, students of art history and of history more generally, who will find in these pages a small but fascinating and diverse assembly of Gothic art objects of Irish origin. One is left with the suggestion that there may be many more book shrines buried in bogs awaiting discovery! Hourihane begins with a general introduction to the subject. One brief disappointment is the lack of a clear definition of what is understood to be ‘Gothic Irish’ as distinct from ‘Irish Gothic’. The use of both terms, without definition, may suggest that Gothic art in Ireland is a provincial offshoot of the mainstream rather than a distinctive school. In the first chapter, the author concentrates on a fascinating account of the historiography of Irish Gothic. He draws attention to the many historic descriptions and records collected by antiquarians and introduces the readers to the broad scope of all that is picturesque and romantic about the formation of medieval art history in Ireland. While little information survives from the 17th century, it appears that 18th-century antiquarians were eager to capture many panoramic views of the Gothic ruins and in some cases to establish a methodological record of standing remains. The author suggests that this interest in Gothic monuments in Ireland arises out of the more widespread practice of the European Grand Tour. The author then takes on the challenge of establishing a chronology for the Rock of Cashel as a starting point for the first comprehensive catalogue of the architectural sculpture and as a revised framework for the construction of the buildings. This chapter, taken together with a separate discussion of the architectural sculpture of the decorated Irish Gothic portals, calls attention to the proliferation of church architecture during this period and the subsequent profusion of art works to adorn these new buildings. The delightful iconographic theme of the Virtuous Pelican is explored as an example of the inventiveness and individuality of Medieval Irish art, decorating architecture as much as works of art, and this discussion provides a specific example of the use of iconography in the Irish context within the mainstream of Gothic art. The focus then shifts to Gothic metalwork and the art of the book shrine. Here Hourihane explains that the arts are less strongly represented as a result of the Anglo-Norman invasion, causing a decline of the metalwork tradition towards the middle of the 12th century. He gathers together the evidence and presents a detailed survey of six book shrines. He includes a lively discussion of the social structures, which enabled these works to be produced. Such a glittering array of often forgotten pieces bears testimony to the skill of the artists of whom little is evidently known. While the author draws our attention to the sometimes illusive subject matter, the very fact that these objects are grouped together here allows for a clearer overall assessment of Gothic art in Ireland to be carried out. In the concluding chapter Hourihane focuses on the question of the Gaelic revival and its impact on Gothic Irish art in the 15th century. In this connection he revisits the tower-house as the unavoidable image of 15th-century Ireland and he also reviews the manuscript evidence, architectural sculpture and metalwork. He concludes that there is a discernable stylistic development associated with this period: on the one hand a noted revival of earlier stylistic conventions such as interlace for decoration, and on the other a reinterpretation of iconography. An inventory of the architectural sculpture at Cashel is presented as a very useful appendix, together with a complete bibliography at the end of this work. Altogether this makes for an engaging and highly accessible book, which is a must for both scholar and enthusiast alike and more generally for those passionate about art in Ireland. His next volume is eagerly awaited. Dr Lynda Mulvin is a lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College, Dublin.   Breon O’Casey: a Celtic Artist Jack O’Sullivan Lund Humphries 2003 pp112 hb Ills col 79 &ills b/w 15 E42 £30 ISBN 085331 862 Brian Fallon Breon O’Casey has become familiar to Irish art-lovers over the past decade with his various exhibitions at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin, at the RHA Gallagher Galleries a few years ago, and more recently in the enterprising Peppercanister Gallery. (Previously there had been an exhibition of his paintings in the long-vanished Little Theatre in Brown Thomas, but few people appear to remember it). He is remarkably, even outstandingly versatile – in fact, I doubt very much if any other living artist can command such a range of talents. He is painter, graphic artist, sculptor and – until very recently – weaver and jeweller. He is, of course, the son of the playwright Sean O’Casey, though himself English-born, and his mother Eileen, an actress-showgirl, was entirely Irish by blood though London by background. His own wife, Doreen, is an Ulsterwoman. To complicate matters, his art training had a strongly Francophile slant, almost universal in England in the second third of the 20th century, and his coming-of-age creatively took place mainly in Cornwall, where the so-called St Ives School of painters had pioneered a type of abstract art with a basis in nature. Breon was close to many of these personally, but he has rarely painted landscape and a kind of embryonic still-life structure frequently appears to lie behind the outward abstraction of his mature style. It is all a fairly eclectic mix, so the consciously challenging appellation ‘Celtic’ does not take us very far, True, Cornwall is a Celtic country and the genius loci there plainly infiltrated St Ives style; O’Casey was also close to the late, great Tony O’Malley and my sculptor-brother Conor. There was plenty of Welsh and Cornish input into the school too, though probably the solvent in most of this was French art – Braque is a presence in much of O’Casey’s paintings and graphic work. The colour illustrations to this book show some highly competent early portraits (including one of his father), a series of abstractions from the 1960s which surprisingly resemble Rothko (who visited St Ives) and finally the reticent, quasi-geometric, severely sensuous small paintings which have become his virtual trademark. Jack O’Sullivan has a theme, almost a thesis, which makes much play with Sean O’Casey’s departure from Ireland after the ‘Silver Tassie’ rejection by Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, and the legacy which this visited upon his surviving son (Breon’s much – loved brother Niall died tragically in his teens). Now the ‘Silver Tassie’ affair is dubious territory, apparently much mythologised, and it is sometimes forgotten the O’Casey had been offered productions of the play by other Irish theatres. He was scarcely a martyr-figure (though he certainly seems to have had enemies), but he was increasingly at odds with post-Treaty Ireland and its value; in any case, he must surely have had theatrical and literary ambitions beyond what Dublin could satisfy. So no need to create a mystique where there is, in fact, no mystery. Breon’s links with his father’s homeland have obviously grown over the years, but he has stopped short of a return to it and scarcely feels himself a semi-exile deprived of his cultural patrimony. He has had numerous one-man shows in Ireland, and during the 1990s he was a guest artist of the Ballinglen Foundation in Mayo – a visit which, incidentally, did much to aerate his palette. Some years ago there was even talk of him moving to Ireland and setting up his workshop-studio there, but it has come to nothing – which is not surprising. Settled into a former farmhouse near Penzance, immersed in a steady work routine and with family, friends and well-wishers around him, he would seem to have everything he wants-including buyers for his work. Now in his seventies, O’Casey has had to curtail his activities and the jewellery-making and weaving have been abandoned; painting, sculpture and graphic art are now the key elements in his creativity. The sculpture was originally an offshoot from the jewellery and for some time consisted mainly of small cut-out figures in metal. Since then it has expanded steadily in range and modelling strength, as is shown by the impressive bronze Acrobat of 1998. As for the painting, he and Terry Frost (much older) are the last two representatives of St Ives tradition, now that Lanyon, Hilton, Heron etc. are in theirs graves – as, alas, is their peer Tony O’Malley. O’Casey’s painting does not command a wide range, admittedly, but it has a great deal of subtlety and painterliness inside its limited orbit. This book, apart from the main essay and good illustrations, includes a sensitive appreciation of the paintings by Sophie Bowness. Perhaps the best thing in it, however, is Breon O’Casey’s own introduction – he is, to add to his envy-making range of talents, a born writer. It is rumoured, by the way, that he intends to write a book about the entire St Ives years – that would be something to look forward to. Brian Fallon was art critic with the Irish Times from 1963 until his retirement in 1988