Julian Campbell recalls the career of a little-remembered artist in the year of his centenary who was once part of the progressive Antwerp School in the 1880s
In the National Gallery of Ireland there is a painting entitled A Dutch Interior (Fig 1). It is by Dundalk-born artist Henry Allan, the youngest and least-known of a talented generation of Irish artists who studied in Antwerp in the 1880s, and who have become known as ‘The Antwerp School’.¹ These include Norman Garstin, Walter Osborne, Joseph M Kavanagh, Nathaniel Hill, Roderic O’Conor, Richard Moynan and Dermod O’Brien, all of whom helped to introduce a new Naturalism into Irish art, or who painted in a bold Impressionist style. In Antwerp Allan was briefly a fellow student of van Gogh’s. On his return home, he painted landscapes and figurative subjects in a vigorous, expressive style, portraits, and one important historical painting. He was awarded prizes, exhibited many pictures at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), and was admired by contemporaries. Since his death in 1912 his work has fallen into obscurity. In itself A Dutch Interior may not be that remarkable, the colours being subdued and the paintwork sketchy. But it is interesting in this Allan’s centenary year to study it in the context of his career.
Stephanie McBride examines the startling imagery of Richard Mosse who has made infrared film his signature medium
From a rural setting in County Antrim, Basil Blackshaw has contributed a new chapter to the story of Irish art, writes Brian Fallon as the retrospective at the F E McWilliam Gallery marking Blackshaw’s 80th birthday continues.
Frederick O’Dwyer follows the evidence to unearth the design sources for Dublin Airport’s original terminal at Collinstown