Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 2nd September 2020

70 Sheelagh and Terry Flanagan were a team that was at the heart of Irish visual culture for half a century, although to see them purely as a couple is perhaps to simplify their roles and their individual achieve- ments. For them, social life and family life overlapped with work and other activities, and the collection of paintings and drawings gathered here combines to represent this fruitful interweaving. Their day-to-day activities were, in many ways, very different. In her youth Sheelagh became an actress, before taking on a courageous and determined role in the face of the violence of the Troubles, as a leading figure in the Peace-Point group. Terry’s quiet and dogged pursuit of his vision as a painter in his studios in Belfast and Donegal was by contrast very private, despite his collaborations with certain friends and the involvement of his family. They built up around them a remarkable circle of colleagues and friends who shared their enduring faith in the importance of art and, more broadly, in the centrality of culture at a precarious time. In the early days of their marriage they spent time with John and Roberta Hewitt and Alice Berger Hammerschlag. Then a younger generation took shape; Brian Friel and David Hammond were close friends, while family holidays were interspersed with visits from Seamus Heaney, Joan Trimble or Kenneth Jamison. Despite the lively socialising, what seems to have been at the heart of these friendships was a shared dedication for their work. Time spent with Heaney became inspiration for joint projects, such as the January God studies included here. Even in the most relaxed days of summer there was still the need for a morning’s painting before embarking on any other activities. These were, however, above all family holidays, with Philip, Catherine and Tony, and it is not surprising that in these circumstances and immersed in these places, their two older children became artists and Tony an archaeologist. Terry had found early success as a painter. Only just out of Belfast College of Art his work was acquired by the legendary Belfast collector Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl. He was the only Northern Irish painter Colin Middleton picked out when asked by Michael Longley about his local contemporaries, commenting that they were both ‘addicted to places’. One of the few Ulster painters of his generation to become widely collected in Dublin, he became one of David Hendriks’ most popular gallery artists, with Tom Caldwell showing his work regularly in Belfast from the 1970s. T.P. and Sheelagh Flanagan with F.E. McWilliam at The Tate Gallery for the opening of the F.E.McWilliam sculpture retrospective in 1989. (Photograph courtesy of the Flanagan Estate) T.P. & SHEELAGH FLANAGAN, THEIR LIVES TOGETHER A STUDIO COLLECTION (LOTS 59 - 74)