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25 GEORGE RUSSELL AE (1867-1935)Self Portrait
Oil on canvas, 40 x 50cm (15¾ x 19¾’’)
Signed with monogram and dated 1923
Provenance: Miss Maureen Russell, the artist’s granddaughter and subsequently sold in these rooms 31st May 2000 where purchased by current
owners.
Exhibited: “George W. Russell Exhibition” Model and Arts and Niland Gallery April/June 2006 Cat. No. 18.
Literature: “George W. Russell” Diana and Marcus Beale 2006 Full page illustration Page 35.
Æ (George William Russell) was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, in 1867, and moved to Dublin when he was eleven. He was an active Irish nationalist
and editor of The Irish Homestead and The Irish Statesman. He wrote a number of poetry collections and was a major figure in the Irish Literary Renais-
sance. He was intensely interested in mysticism. As an artist he studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School and the RHA School. According to Crookshank
and Glin, ‘[He] was a prolific painter of topics as varied as straight depictions of children playing, theosophical subjects, with their mythological world,
and an occasional conventional landscape, showing considerable talent’. (Ireland’s Painters 1600-1940, 299)
Daniel Mulhall has written; ‘AE was well ahead of his time as it is only in recent decades that an inclusive attitude to the past has prevailed. He also
acknowledged the role of women in the Rising, but without the condescension of Yeats’ ‘George Russell (AE) and Easter Rising: a pacifist poet’s view of
poets’ revolution’ Feb 4, 2016, Irish Times.
‘Self Portrait’ 1923 is an accomplished portrait by Russell in a relatively academic style. The artist was 56 when he painted this. It is a somewhat unusual
shape in almost landscape format for a head and shoulders composition. The artist has depicted himself with his head slightly turned and eyes looking
to the left to meet the viewer directly. This stance has also provided the opportunity to include highlights of white on the ear, the side of the face, beard,
forehead, cheek and nose. The right is more in shadow but all facial elements are discernible. The artist is wearing a rather formal three piece suit
with white shirt and maroon cravat tie. The background is a rich brown with brushstrokes evident to create a neutral ground. The artist has captured
the play of light on his hair and beard and the colour of his hair almost blends with the background at times. The overall composition is a pleasure to
behold and gives the viewer a sense of the relative enigma of the artist, his many roles in life and his evident depth of personality. His eyes are serious
and interested and yet inscrutable. Perhaps that sense of the inscrutable was balanced with the warmth and empathy that Russell was known for. Frank
O’Connor wrote about Russell’s affability and friendliness “the warmth and kindness, which enfolded you like an old fur coat” (29) and also how he was
the “the man who was the father to three generations of Irish writers” (My Father’s Son, Pan Books Edition, 1971, 111).
If we consider Russell’s 1913 poem ‘Immortality’ perhaps there is a Dorian Gray type incantation for his literary and artistic work voiced through this ‘Self
Portrait’; ‘We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit’s fire; /…Surely here is soul: with it we have eternal breath:/ In the fire of love we live, or pass
by many ways, / By unnumbered ways of dream to death.’
Russell also inspired other artists, perhaps most notably Hilda Roberts and it is her portrait of Gerge Russell from 1929 that has been described in
Ireland’s Painters 1600-1940 as ‘one of the great portraits of the first half of the nineteenth century’. (299) In this work, she has depicted the artist as
intensely serious and larger than life shown in front of one of his own mystical paintings. It is painterly, expressive and demonstrates a clear respect
and affection for her inspiration.
Marianne O’Kane Boal
€ 6,000 - 8,000