The Ireland–U.S. Council and Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award at the Royal Hibernian Academy’s Annual Exhibition is in its twentieth year. Francis O’Toole takes the 2025 award, and RÓISÍN KENNEDY praises his painting, ‘which goes beyond conventional portraiture to build up several avenues of exploration’. At some three hundred acres, Marlay Park is one of the largest public parks in the greater Dublin area. PETER PEARSON commends Marlay House’s restoration and the parklands, and recounts the history of the house, built by the Huguenot La Touche banking family, in 1764. PETER MURRAY surveys the work of sculptor Rachel Joynt, whose aesthetic, he says, has little relationship with Western tradition; In conversation with AIDAN DUNNE, artist Anita Groener tells him how she’s ‘always trying to connect the dots – to find that underlying human story’; and MICHAEL WALDRON considers the history and legacy of the Munster Fine Art Society. JOSEPH McBRINN welcomes the National Gallery of Ireland’s exhibition on Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett, artists whose role in the development of Cubism and abstraction in Ireland, he believes, has been underplayed; MARGARITA CAPPOCK looks at artist Barbara Knežević’s current exhibition of work, which is influenced by her past; and BERNARD MEEHAN highlights illustrations in a manuscript of the gospels created by Irish monks in a Swiss abbey in the 8th century. American artist Helen Hooker O’Malley found inspiration in the West of Ireland. STEPHANIE McBRIDE writes that her extensive body of photographs from the 1930s onwards emphasise her centrality in the history of Irish photography; and fellow American Sam Gilliam’s residency at the Ballinglen Foundation in Co Mayo in the 1990s resulted in colourful landscape ‘drapes’, as JOHN BEARDSLEY discloses. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s EAMONN MAXWELL on Fergus Fitzgerald and FRANCIS HALSALL on Zsolt Basti; PATRICK BOWE outlines the design features of three historic Irish gardens, now only remembered through watercolours; and Cecilia Danell tells NIAMH NicGHABHANN COLEMAN that she likes to think of her landscape paintings as ‘creating a place’ rather than ‘painting a place’. Enjoy!
A Surrealist influence is evident in With Tomorrow, where the use of the Rückenfigur – a person seen from behind – dominates and where the surrounding space creates a tense and intriguing setting, writes Róisín Kennedy
Margarita Cappock visits Barbara Knežević’s exhibition, in which she explores her Balkan heritage through sculpture and film
Zsolt Basti talks to Francis Halsall about his accomplished practice, in which abstraction is an act of empathy
Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman explores the paintings of Swedish-born artist Cecilia Danell and her playful use of colour and line
From the outset, Rachel Joynt’s work has been characterised by a sense of the infinite and the immediate, writes Peter Murray
Exposure to different cultures gives Fergus Fitzgerald’s work a joyous energy, as Eamonn Maxwell discovers
Anita Groener tells Aidan Dunne about the enduring concerns of her work, in which she is ‘always trying to bring things together and hold them together’
The unstretched quilted creations that grew out of Sam Gilliam’s time in Ireland lie between the improvisations of his stained drape paintings and the rigour of his stretched collaged compositions, writes John Beardsley
Stephanie McBride appraises photographs of the West of Ireland by American photographer Helen Hooker O’Malley
Michael Waldron remembers Cork’s Munster Fine Art Club (1920–1988), which exhibited the work of local artists and Irish artists with national and international reputations
One of Ireland’s most significant medieval manuscripts survives in the Abbey Library of St Gallen in Switzerland, as Bernard Meehan elucidates
Peter Pearson visits Marlay House, at the foot of the Dublin Mountains, which was opened to the public fifty years ago
Joseph McBrinn examines one of the most fascinating partnerships in Irish art history
Patrick Bowe looks at paintings of three Irish gardens, which favour effects of light and colour over botanical detail
In many pictures Harriet Kirkwood seems to be telling a story, and the story is life itself, which infuses her painting, writes Hilary Pyle
Matthew Potter selects a painting, The Exchange, Nicholas Street, from the Limerick Museum Collection
