Deirdre Kelly sheds light on AE Russell’s ‘dream’ paintings as Armagh County Museum honours a native son with an exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of his birth
When George ‘AE’ Russell first met Charles Johnston in the mid 1880s it is highly unlikely that he could have foretold the significant impact that the meeting would have on his life. Introduced to Johnston by mutual friend WB Yeats while both were attending the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, AE was delighted to meet someone ‘who was then as excited as I was by that literature in which the seers seem to have gone into a divine nature and come back dark and shining and god-intoxicated’.
Johnston set up the first Theosophical Lodge in Dublin in 1886 after returning from a visit to London with the controversial leader of the Theosophical Movement, Madame HP Blavatsky. Theosophy is a syncretism or a mixture of several religions and is essentially a western pre-occupation with eastern ideas including karma and re-incarnation. Theosophy appeared to affirm everything that was most idealistic in AE with its emphasis on man’s essentially spiritual nature. In a broader context, Symbolist artists and writers imbued with fin-de-siecle anxiety, were drawn to theosophy’s objectivesof a brotherhood of man, religious tolerance, the study of nature, and openness to meditation and introspection.
Peter Murray recalls the independent spirit Edith Blake, diarist and artist and one-time occupant of Myrtle Grove, Youghal, County Cork
While working as an intern at the NPA Mike Bors gained access to a remarkable collection created by talented amatuer, Sir Robert Ball, astromoner and scientific adviser to the Commissioners of Irish Lights
Peter Pearson welcomes a new chapter in the management of Johnstown Castle, County Wexford