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34 George Campbell RHA
(1917 - 1979)
Portrait of art critic Arthur Power
Pencil 23 x 16cm. Signed.
It is not known if Campbell viewed the exhibition in Dublin, August 1945, entitled ‘Modern
Continental Paintings’. It was organized by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland
and the central theme was the School of Paris. Artists that exhibited who were to influence
Campbell after his trip to Paris were George Braque, George Rouault and Pablo Picasso. The
writer/critic Arthur Power, who became friendly with Campbell around this time, lent three
works to the exhibition.
Arthur Power positively reviewed Campbell’s first solo exhibition in 1946 at Waddington’s.
56
Living in Paris in the 1920s, Power met a number of writers and artists including Ossip
Zadkine, who had taught Basil Rákoczi, so it is likely Campbell’s visit to Zadkine in Paris in
1950 was linked to Power. Zadkine exhibited at the IELA in 1947.
Waddington’s friendship with other gallery owners benefited Campbell. He arranged for
Campbell to have a solo exhibition with his friend Alfred Goodwin at Goodwin Galleries,
Limerick, 1946. In the same year in Belfast, a younger group of artists, Arthur Armstrong,
Thomas McCreanor and Leslie Zukor, met the Boys and Arthur Campbell, and they remained
friends throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
After the war, Dillon and the White Stag group returned to London, where Dillon joined
his Belfast friends, Cyril Murray and Patrick Kelly, to work on emergency repairs to bombed
housing sites. Living in the basement flat of his sister Mollie’s house at 102A Abbey Road,
NW6 until 1963, Dillon continued to divide his time between Belfast, Dublin and London.
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The exhibition opened on the 28 March 1946. George Campbell sold thirty-three works in this exhibition.
fig.53: George Campbell and
Arthur Power
fig.54: Patrick Kelly, 1944