Sixty years ago, on 16 September 1943, curious crowds flocked to the National College of Art, Kildare Street, Dublin, for the opening of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. There they were confronted with a cross-section of contemporary art, where the stalwarts of the Academic tradition, hung beside Ireland’s most progressive Modernists.

The reaction to the show was a heady mixture of enthusiasm and confusion, with some declaring the IELA ‘unique in the annals of art history’, and others lambasting, ‘artists who have ideas minus the capacity to express them’.1 Despite conflicting opinions, all recognised that the IELA marked a significant departure from the Royal Hibernian Academy and that it was effectively ‘striking a new note in Irish art’.2

Four months earlier, Mainie Jellett, Louis le Brocquy, Jack Hanlon and Norah McGuinness, had met in le Brocquy’s studio and decided that, ‘owing to a growing demand ...we hereby constitute ourselves a committee, to organise a public exhibition to be called, ‘The Irish Exhibition of Living Art’… the function of the exhibition shall be to: make available to a large public a comprehensive survey of significant work, irrespective of School or manner, by living Irish artists.3 Jellett was elected chairman, Laurence Campbell, RHA, Margaret Clarke, RHA, Ralph Cusack and Evie Hone were invited to join and the College of Art was identified as the most suitable venue.

From this inaugural meeting, it was already clear that the IELA was not intended to be hostile to the RHA. If inviting Academicians to participate could be seen as an astute political move, the use of the College of Art the venue for RHA exhibitions and an institution dominated by Academicism, dispelled any myths of rebellion. Yet, if the IELA was not to be a salon des refusés, how was it envisaged?

In fact, the founders of the IELA had every justification to rebel, and no one more so than the young artist, Louis le Brocquy. The RHA’s rejection of le Brocquy’s The Spanish Shawl, and Image of Chaos in 1942 was a catalyst for the foundation of the IELA.4 That the Academy should reject an artist with modernist tendencies, would have been unremarkable had they not been accepting similar work by le Brocquy since 1937.5 In May 1942, perhaps prompted by le Brocquy’s rejection, Mainie Jellett published a damning indictment of the Academy, accusing it of ‘a miasma of vulgarity and self-satisfaction’ and begging that it at least, ‘give us good academic work’.6 In April 1943, as if in revenge, the RHA rejected le Brocquy and all other Modernists. As the Irish Times noted, it seemed that the RHA was ‘going to close down on modernist painting’.7 Rejected by the RHA and frustrated by its floundering standards, the founders of the IELA had every reason to rebel. Yet, they chose instead to embrace both the Avant-garde and the Academic and create an institution best described as pluralistic.
Undoubtedly, the IELA’s promotion of pluralism was partly a pragmatic decision. Realising that their ambition to show a ‘comprehensive survey’ would be impossible without the use of the NCA, (National College of Art) they dared not alienate that College, nor the RHA who dominated it.8 Temperance was also required to secure patronage from the Director of the National Gallery and Dermod O’Brien, President of the RHA, whose involvement solidified the connection between the RHA and the IELA and represented recognition from the very heart of the establishment.

With the infrastructure in place, the business of selection could proceed. In order to realise their ambition of presenting a ‘comprehensive survey’ of ‘significant’ art, the committee invited a number of artists to submit, ‘recent and important examples’ of their work, and considered submissions from others.9 By August, 500 works had been received, only 168 of which would be shown.10 Mainie Jellett suggested that the selection and hanging of the pictures be done by the ‘whole committee’, and so the attribution of ‘significance’ became a collective decision involving both Modernists and Academicians.11

From 16 September to 9 October, the IELA attracted over 5,000 visitors and raised £289 from sales.12 The Irish Times heralded ‘the most vital and distinguished exhibition of work by Irish artists that has ever been held’, and noted that academicians ‘have chivalrously joined in …by sending works… to be judged by the ‘moderns’.13 Declaring ‘variety the spice of Art’, The Evening Mail stressed that ‘proof that the exhibition is in no way a ‘rebel’ movement is to be found in the fact that several prominent Academicians are represented’.14 While most reviewers praised the IELA’s decision to court the Academy, The Sunday Independent, announced ‘a rebel exhibition; created by rebellion that was bound to come’.15 Inevitably, there was also criticism of the Modernist works with the Irish Press lambasting the inclusion of, ‘persons who claim the title artist without the ideas or capacity’, but also conceding that ‘the exhibition is a very revealing symposium of the virtues and defects of the Irish artistic world of 1943’.16

If there was debate over the IELA’s definition of significant, it was generally agreed that the work was well displayed. Noting that ‘exhibits have been chosen and hung with more imagination and taste than usual’, the Irish Times credited the ‘several distinguished women artists’ on the committee, while the Irish Independent remarked that ‘being fewer in number the pictures have more room and are consequently better arranged than at most exhibitions held in these rooms’.17

While most reviews concentrated on the academic presence or quality of display, Stephen Rynne, of the Leader and A J Leventhal recognised another concern of the IELA, that of audience. Rynne expressed fears that the artists’ anticipation of a ‘different sort of public’ had resulted in ‘immense pains … to please even if pleasing … meant that the painter broke away completely from his accustomed way’.18 Leventhal’s more positive review, claimed that the IELA’s pluralism made it, ‘unique in the annals of art history’ and provided a explanatory history of Modernism in recognition that ‘the average visitor to art exhibitions is not normally confronted with cubist and surrealist creations’.19 Despite their conflicting opinions, both critics recognised that the IELA was not merely set up by artists, for artists, but rather an institution born to answer a public need.

If we consider the founding of the IELA as primarily a didactic mission, many of the committee’s decisions acquire a new clarity. Pluralism was essential to create a survey of Irish art; selection was required to maintain standards and official backing was desirable to placate those suspicious of Modernism. In order to ensure that they both attracted the public and educated them, the IELA organised a programme of lectures and tours, exceptionally ambitious for a fledgling institution.

Notices were sent to national schools in Dublin announcing that the Department of Education granted permission for children to visit the IELA.20 The offer was well received and for three mornings in October the NCA was filled with hordes of school children who saw the show free of charge. The press clamoured to print photos of the event and undoubtedly, such publicity helped challenge the public perception of art as an elitist affair. While most welcomed the IELA’s attempts to be democratic, some saw their efforts as insincere and complained, ‘a great disservice has been done if ordinary people pre-occupied with the burden of life … are invited to lift up their eyes in expectation of the portrayal of truth and beauty and are shown instead amorphous imbecilities’. 21

On reflection, the IELA’s determination to be democratic and didactic, can be partly attributed to the influence of Mainie Jellett. In 1942, Jellett had argued that, ‘the idea of an artist being a special person, an exotic flower set apart from other people is … the cause of artists being pushed out of their lawful position in the life and society of the present day’.22 In her critique of the RHA, Jellett anticipated another preoccupation of the IELA, when she complained that the ‘quality of nationality is something lacking in Irish art as a whole’23 For two decades, Jellett had struggled to reconcile her dedication to international Modernism with the desire for national art. By 1943, in images like Virgin of Eire, she had effectively wed her cubist aesthetic to subjects comprehensible within the limited context of Irish visual culture.24 Looking to the RHA, in 1942, she feared that those achievements were threatened by aesthetic conservatism and a narrow definition of ‘Irishness’.

Inevitably, the IELA’s engagement with the debate over the nature of ‘Irish’ art, provoked criticism. The most virulent attack came from Máirín Allen, who complained, ‘if any exile visited the Irish Exhibition of Living Art … he must have emerged bewildered … by the utter foreign-ness of so much presented to him as Irish art … rightly or wrongly one gets the notion that the strange foreign-ness … is the result of an absence of contact between these artists and the normal, native cultural background ’.25

The ‘normal, native cultural background’ that Allen referred to, was that of an Ireland, Gaelic, Catholic and nationalist; the Ireland portrayed in the paintings of Sean Keating RHA. Keating was a virulent anti-modernist, whose work, often thematically in accord with nationalism, embodied the Academy’s definition of ‘Irish’ art. Yet, in 1943, Keating’s painting, Dumpers at Poulaphouca, hung in the IELA. While Keating must have been informed, the work, already more than a decade old, had been lent by the Electricity Supply Board rather than the artist. In order to present a ‘comprehensive survey’ the IELA was willing to embrace outspoken opponents of Modernism and hang them with avant-garde works such as le Brocquy’s The Kiss: Classic Theme II completed only weeks before.

For some commentators the pursuit of a ‘national art’, whether Academic or Modernist, was restrictive. A J Leventhal complained that since ‘there was nothing particularly national among the exhibits’, resident foreign artists should be eligible.26 This was an acknowledgement of the vital link with international developments provided by foreign artists, particularly those of The White Stag Group, who lived and worked in Ireland during the war years. By focusing solely on the work of Irish artists, the first IELA had chosen to exclude an important section of the Irish art scene. Perhaps taking Leventhal’s criticism to heart, in February 1944 the IELA unanimously passed a motion that ‘non-Irish artists be eligible to exhibit in the 1944 exhibition’.27

The second IELA would also include a memorial to Mainie Jellett who died in February 1944.28 Jellett’s death marked the end of an era for Irish art, but throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the IELA maintained her legacy, by providing a forum where artists and the public could see ‘significant’ Irish and international art. While circumstances sometimes compromised their intentions and pluralism often failed to satisfy either the Academy or the Avant-garde, the IELA remained true to its founding principles, and most significantly, always attempted to answer the demands of the public they set out to serve.

Riann Coulter is an art historian and lecturer who is researching the extent and nature of cultural exchange in the visual arts between Belfast, London and Dublin between 1943 and 1967.
Anne Yeats’ archives of the IELA are in the National Irish Visual Arts Library, NCAD.

1 Modern versus Academy: The Living Art Exhibition’ by A J Leventhal, Irish Art: A volume of articles and illustrations, Parkside Press, Parkgate St. Dublin 1944, p.82, ‘3 Classes in Art Show’, the Irish Press, 16 Sep 1943, signed TW.
2 ‘Striking a New Note in Irish Art’, Sunday Independent 29 August 1943, signed CGH.
3 Minutes from inaugural meeting of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Wednesday 12th May 1943. Minute Book 1943-51, Anne Yeats Archive, National Irish Visual Arts Library, NCAD p.120.
4 Louis’ mother Sybil is credited with first suggesting the idea of an alternative annual exhibition and with christening it. Kennedy, S B, Irish Art and Modernism: 1880-1950, Belfast: Queen’s University Press, 1991 p. 120.
5 Le Brocquy’s painting The Picnic, which is arguably more radical than either of his ’42 submissions, was accepted by the RHA in 1940. Unfortunately, the minutes of the RHA’s AGM for this period contain no references to the selection processes.
6 Jellett, Mainie, ‘The RHA and Youth’, Commentary, May 1942 p.57.
7 ‘Moderns’ Not Wanted’, Irish Times, 3 April 1943, p.3 cited in Kennedy p.119.
8 Minutes from inaugural meeting of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, p.120.
9 IELA entry form 1943, scrap book 1943-57, Anne Yeats Archive.
10 ‘Impressive Studies at Irish Art Exhibition’, Evening Mail, 16 Sept 1943.
11 Minutes of committee meeting 15 July, 1943.
12 IELA Minutes 11 October 1943. 3,000 adults and over 2,000 school children saw the exhibition and £289 represented the sale of about one third of the exhibits.
13 ‘Living Art-A New Departure’, the Irish Times,16 Sept. 1943, unsigned.
14 ‘Impressive Studies at Irish Art Exhibition,’ Evening Mail, 16 Sept 1943.
15 ‘Irish Exhibition of Living Art’, Sunday Independent Sept 19 1943, signed CGH.
16 Irish Press, 17th Sep 1943, and ‘3 Classes in Art Show’, the Irish Press, 16 Sept 1943 both signed TW.
17 The Irish Times, Sept 16th, 1943;‘A Stimulating Art Display,’ Irish Independent, 10 Sept 1943.
18 ‘Art Alive Alive-O!’, Stephen Rynne the Leader, 25 Sept 1943.
19 Modern versus Academy: The Living Art Exhibition by A J Leventhal, 1944, p.82
20 Postcard p.24 of IELA scrap book, Anne Yeats Archive.
21 ‘Art, Artists and the ‘Ordinary People’ signed BC p.32 of IELA scrapbook.
22 Jellett, M, ‘Definition of My Art’ published as ‘An Approach to Painting’ in Irish Art Handbook ed Basil Clancy, Dublin, 1943.
23 Jellett, 1942, cited in S B Kennedy, p. 116.
24 ‘Translating Modernism’, Riann Coulter, unpublished MA, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2000.
25 Mairin Allan, ‘Irish Post-Impressionism’, Father Matthew Record, November 1943, p.10.
26 Levanthal, A J, p.92-93.
27 Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) minutes 6 February 1944.
28 Exhibition catalogue of Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) 1944.