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55 ALBERT IRVIN RA (1922-2015) Glenmore (1985)Acrylic on canvas, 153 X 213 cm (60 X 84”)
Signed and dated (19)’85 verso
Provenance: From the Collection of the late Gillian Bowler.
Exhibited : “Albert Irvin Exhibition: Paintings and prints 1980 - 1995”, Dublin RHA Gallagher Gallery, Nov/Dec 1995,
Catalogue No. 7.
Literature: “Albert Irvin” Exhibition catalogue 1995, full page illustration p.27.
Albert Irvin grew up in London until he was evacuated to Northhampton following the outbreak of World War II
in 1939. He won a scholarship to Northampton School of Art in 1940, but his only formal education as an artist
was disrupted by conscription a year later. He became a navigator for the RAF and flew on bombing missions into
Germany as a member of 236 Squadron. He returned to London after the War and immediately began a precarious
career, supported in this by his artist wife, Betty, whom he had met as a student and by working as a screen printer
on Laura Ashley’s first fabric designs. Associated with the St Ives’ painters Terry Frost and Peter Lanyon in the 1950s
and 60s, his career as a painter began to come together after he had been exposed to shows of American Abstract
Expressionism in the 1960s, when he also began to teach part-time in Goldsmith’s College, London. His large scale,
flamboyant paintings became popular only in the 1980s and 90s, when he was in his sixties, and when he was a
prominent figure in reviving British Painting. Bert, as he was known to his many friends, was recognized in Ireland
from the early 1980s when he was included in ROSC 1984 and given a solo exhibition at the Butler Gallery a year
later.
Irvin’s abstract paintings are thoroughly informed by his urban background, although his vision must also have been
influenced by seeing the cities of Germany from the air and through the prism of navigational maps. As he put it, ’The
traversing of the canvas with a loaded brush stands in direct relation to the traversing of the spaces in which I live
and have my being’. Even their titles bear witness to this. From ‘
Soho
’ (IMMA, Collection), to ‘
Battersea’, ‘Piccadilly’,
and
‘Clapham
’, they spell out a sense of the energy and bustle he found as he travelled between his home and his studio.
The architectural nature of cities explains the importance of the rectangle and the square for him, as he points out
they echo the ‘given of his world’. Oval canvases attracted him but he found that they dominated the painting. The
more static rectangle gave him the scope to play off the energy in the painting against its outer edge, and that ener-
gy is the subject of his work.
‘Glenmore’
is a little different. The title and date suggests that it was prompted by his visit to Kilkenny and rural
Ireland in 1985, although painted in his London studio. “I don’t make use of direct appearances so there is no way
in which I’ll produce holiday snaps”,
(1)
he told Peter Hill, so ‘
Glenmore’
offers nothing superficially descriptive of the
place it references in the title, it remind us, instead, of Irvin’s love of music and his belief that art is most effective
when communicating through a language of abstract form and rhythms. Thus the open composition employed in
‘Glenmore’
, the more expansive areas of yellow, when compared to his busier, urban paintings, suggest a relaxed
lyricism. The spatial relationships and softer open curvilinear marks here speak of ease and pleasure.
Irvin continued to visit Ireland on numerous occasions with Betty, was given a retrospective exhibition at the RHA in
1995, to which this painting was lent, and even curated an exhibition at IMMA in 1991, dedicated to his friend, the
Irish artist, Tim Mara. He died at the age of 92 in 2015, painting right up to his death. He is survived by his wife Betty
and their daughters.
Catherine Marshall, April 2017
(1) Albert Irvin, interviewed by Peter Hill, in ‘
Albert Irvin’
, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, 1985.
€ 5,000 - 7,000