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Around 1948 George Campbell met furrier, Harry Barnardo. ‘Flamboyant, vivacious and a
spontaneous traveller’,
85
Barnardo attended Waddington’s shows regularly and exhibited with
the Dublin painters from 1950. He exhibited with Campbell in ‘Exhibition of Contemporary
Irish Painting, North America’, which was held in the Symphony Hall, Boston, 1950.
Organized by the Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland (CRC), its aim was to develop
cultural relations with other countries abroad. However, a painting by Barnardo, ‘Wicklow
Path’, caused controversy at home following a letter in
The Irish Press
by Sean Keating under
the pseudonym ‘Mac Alla’.
86
Generous by nature,
87
Barnardo offered to drive the Campbells
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to Europe in 1950. In Paris,
Campbell called on Arthur Power’s friend, Zadkine, who invited Campbell to attend nude
drawing classes at the ‘La Grande Chaumière’. Explaining the theories of art held by Russian
artist Wassily Kandinsky’s, principally that music is the most transcendent form of non-
objective art, Zadkine encouraged Campbell to explore abstract painting. He embarked on a
series of paintings he called, ‘Play of Shapes’ ‘Azcelt’, ‘Allegro’ and ‘Scherzo’. He referred to this
collection of paintings as ‘a sort of musical series, though related to no music in particular.’
89
Viewing Picasso and Braque’s works in Paris also coincided with Campbell’s increased interest
in Flamenco guitar. As a consequence, cubist shapes in his paintings, replaced his Yeatsian
90
style of painting.
85
Interview with Caroline Barnardo, 25 January 2014.
86
Barnardo had started to paint a year earlier with encouragement from Campbell. Keating attacked the
selectors choice of Barnardo and the standard of the proposed exhibition.
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Barnardo lent furs to the Pike Theatre for their productions.
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George and Madge Campbell never learnt to drive. Campbell feared heights, confined spaces and hospitals,
and from the early 1960s he was anxious about illness and health.
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George Campbell: Self Portrait,
BBC, 1973
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Campbell admired Jack Butler Yeats’s success in the 1940s and the two artists were friendly by 1949.
fig.83: Harry Barnardo
fig.85: Madge, Palace of Versailles,
Paris, 1950
fig.84: Exhibition of Contem-
porary Irish Paintings, North
America, 1950