Modern Irish Artists and Theology

My visit to the National Gallery of Ireland on Wednesday to review William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy (click here for my International Times review) also served to remind me of Theology and Modern Irish Art by Gesa E. Thiessen which explores central issues in the dialogue between theology and art, paying special attention to the spiritual aspects of a number of modern Irish painters. 

These include several on show in the NGI's collection including Mainie Jellett, Colin Middleton, Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Collins and Patrick Scott. Click here for my Airbrushed from Art History post on Theology and Modern Irish Art.

I first visited the NGI last year to see their excellent exhibition Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship (click here to read my review). I included this exhibition as one of my three standout exhibitions for 2025 in an Artlyst article which can be read here. 

The NGI's collection includes work by Hone as well as Jellett. Additionally, their stained glass room also has work by the wonderful Harry Clarke. For more on my earlier visit to Dublin including photographs of work by Hone and Patrick Pye, see here, 

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U2 - Lights Of Home.

Beyond Airbrushed from Art History: Oisín Kelly and Patrick Pye

Two artists not included in Theology and Modern Irish Art by Gesa E. Thiessen but who have made significant contributions to religious art in Ireland are Oisín Kelly and Patrick Pye.

Oisín Kelly was one of the most versatile figures in Irish sculpture: "In 1949, Kelly received his first Church commission from the architect Liam McCormick. Thereafter, religious themes and motifs were a consistent element in his output. Indeed, he was arguably one of the few artists capable of producing religious artworks which had a genuine religious feeling - the result of deep but simple conviction, without rhetoric or sentimentality, though often with a touch of humour.

In 1951, Kelly became a member of the Committee of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art ... [In 1966 he] received a commission for a statue for the new Liberty Hall in Dublin. (The statue, 'Working Men' was subsequently relocated to City Hall, Cork. Another of Kelly's sculptures, 'The Children of Lir' was sited in the Garden of Remembrance, Dublin ...

In addition to religious and commemorative work, Kelly excels in studies of birds and animals - for example, his work 'Birds Alighting' - and small scale sculpture such as, 'The Dancing Sailor'. As a sculptor, he was equally comfortable with wood, stone, or metalwork like bronze and steel, and in stature he was the foremost Irish sculptor of the generation who emerged at the beginning of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art."

Patrick Pye started painting in 1943 under the sculptor Oisín Kelly. "He has completed many major commissions on religious themes, including Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick; Church of the Resurrection, Belfast; Convent of Mercy, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone (1965); Fossa Chapel, Killarney (1977); a triptych illustrating man's expulsion from the Garden of Eden at Bank of Ireland headquarters (1981); and Stations of the Cross for Ballycasheen Church in Killarney (1993). Recent commissions include an altarpiece, stained glass windows and roundels for a rebuilt church at Claddaghmore, Co. Armagh (1997-98); a crucifix for Our Lady of Lourdes church in Drogheda (1999); The Life of Our Lady, a six-panel painting on copper for the North Cathedral in Cork (1999); The Transfiguration, a 10-foot wallhanging for St. Mary's Oratory at NUI Maynooth (2000) and The Baptism of Christ, an oil painting for a new church at Drumbo, Belfast. The Royal Hibernian Academy exhibited Triptychs and Icons, a retrospective of his work, in 1997. Since the Millennium a large painting Theologian in his Garden has been acquired by St Thomas' University in St Paul (MN) for their Centre of Catholic Studies."

Brian McAvera argues in Patrick Pye: Life and Work that "Pye ... far from being on the periphery, is central to the Irish tradition and that he, along with a number of other English-born artists long resident in Ireland such as Camille Souter, reinvigorated the Irish tradition." McAvera also reviews Pye's influences:

"[Paul] Gauguin is ... a clear source, especially in a religious painting like Jacob Wrestling with the Angel with its flat areas of pure colour which are used non-naturalistically, whether for symbolic or expressive purposes. Gauguin, well aware of the decorative effect of colour - and Pye is a frankly decorative painter in terms of colour - also used strong outlines which, because of their patterned rhythms, often suggest the compositional structure of a stained glass window. Pye, who has been producing stained glass since the mid-1950s, and for whom luminosity is central, also structures in terms of patterned rhythms and strong outline shapes.

Gauguin, under whose influence they were formed, leads inevitably to the Nabis, and the Nabis are central to Pye and his use of colour. 'I am influenced by the Nabis. They are quite a concern of mine. I don't want to describe. I want to give a wholeness to the story. It is colour that is important. It's always directed towards the whole of our experience. Colour is what makes space. Line draws out from space. For me it's quite appropriate that Christian art should be abstracted, rather than descriptive'. That combination of the use of colour (symbolic, expressive, flat and often saturated), and abstraction rather than description, is of course precisely what marks out Gauguin's manner in his religious work, or, for that matter, other Pont-Aven artists such as Émile Bernard. It is also the hallmark of so many of the Nabis ... and the Irish artist sees a strong connection between abstracted art and Christianity, citing the tradition of Icons, El Greco and the Nabis, especially Maurice Denis, [Pierre] Bonnard and [Félix] Vallotton.

Denis, whose early work was very influenced by Gauguin, was, like Pye, a devout Catholic who wanted to re-invigorate contemporary religious painting ... his work often used pale, somewhat muted colours, but he emphasized flat patterning and was a markedly decorative painter ...

While Pye has always evinced a distinct liking for the English mystical tradition, the dominant English influence on him as a very young man was that of Neo-Romanticism. Of the nine artists featured in Malcolm Yorke's seminal study The Spirit of Place, five were mentioned by the artist: Paul Nash, John Piper, Graham Sutherland, Robert Colquhoun and Keith Vaughan. Of these Nash and Sutherland are the key figures, 'Paul Nash was quite an influence on me; the little tiny photograph in the early volume [i.e. Penguin Modern Painters] of The Dead Sea. I still love Nash's sensuous quality of painting ...'

Graham Sutherland is probably a deeper influence ... The artist, noting that Sutherland 'converted [to Catholicism] in my childhood, being of my mother's generation', did a copy of The Blasted Oak, 'made a pilgrimage' to see the Northampton Crucifixion at St Matthew's Church, and also saw the tapestry at Coventry Cathedral and the Noli Me Tangere altarpiece at Chichester ...

Of the contemporary mystical painters both Cecil Collins and David Jones, visionaries who are sometimes considered Neo-Romantics, were of interest, But Stanley Spencer, in terms of impact, is probably close to Sutherland ... the artist's visionary quality of bringing the Bible into the present ... provide a parallel to Pye's work ...

Like so many of the twentieth-century European painters he admires, such as [Marc] Chagall, [Georges] Rouault or [Henri] Matisse ... he is a colourist who has created religious works which function equally well for the religious and the non-religious alike ...

Irish art begins to establish its own identity through the confluence of Northern Irish artists like [Colin] Middleton, [Gerard] Dillon, F.E. McWilliam, William Scott and George Campbell, alongside Southern ones like Louis le Brocquy, Jack B. Yeats, Brian Bourke, Nano Reid, Camille Souter, Mary Swanzy, Norah McGuiness and Evie Hone. Pye, like Bourke, le Brocquy and all of the previously mentioned female artists, is particularly interested in Modernism, especially in the abstracting elements and in the non-naturalistic use of colour. he builds on the foundations first established by these female artists, and then reinforced by Doreen Vanston, Elizabeth Rivers and many others, and like Bourke, Souter and Reid in particular, he develops an art whose taproots delve deeply into modernism."

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Van Morrison - Spirit. 

Patrick Scott: Image Space Light

I was first introduced to the work of Patrick Scott, who died on Friday one day before the opening of his retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, by Gesa E. Thiessen's Theology and Modern Irish Art, a study of the work and life of ten leading modern Irish painters from a theological perspective: Mainie Jellett, Jack Yeats, Louis le Brocquy, Gerard Dillon, Colin Middleton, Patrick Collins, Tony O’Malley, Patrick Scott, Patrick Graham and Patrick Hall.

Reviewing this book Cyril Barrett accurately states: 'All artists had a religious upbringing, the majority a Catholic one and all, with two exceptions, gave up the practice of their faith for more or less the same reasons at a fairly early age. The exceptions were Yeats and Jellet, both Church of Ireland, who continued to go to church. Post Tridentine Catholicism does not seem to appeal to artists. Art took its place.

On the other hand, though almost all rejected institutional religion and much of Christian doctrine, they were never antagonistic (except, perhaps, to the clergy) and retained many Christian beliefs.
Interestingly, most of them developed a naturalistic religion, seeing God in nature and feeling that reality is not limited to our field of vision or our sensory experiences. Besides the residue of Christian
belief, many of these artists were interested in pagan and Celtic religions and Zen Buddhism.'

Patrick Scott has been a defining figure of Irish art for over 70 years and the retrospective exhibition now open is testament to his extraordinary career, life and achievements as an artist. Barrett notes that 'Paganism is suggested in Patrick Scott's work in the form of pre-Celtic and Celtic sun worship, an optimistic pursuit in the Irish climate but probably all the more devoutly pursued as a consequence.' He also says that 'Thiessen ... is right to see a religious, if pagan, significance in Scott's 'Gold paintings'.' The early Gold Paintings from 1964 onwards, are arguably Scott’s best known expression.

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Van Morrison - In The Garden.