Irishmen

Irish painting is far less famed than Irish literature. But anyone who recalls the longing of Poet William Butler Yeats for "the bee-loud glade" or the poignant desolation of Novelist George Moore's The Unfilled Field, or any of the more familiar expressions of Celtic lyricism and melancholia, will easily imagine the similar lilt and dolour of Irish painting. Thus when an exhibition of contemporary Irish art opened, last week, at the Helen Hackett Galleries in Manhattan, few were surprised at the nature of the paintings.* Irishmen like Paul Henry see landscapes of mist-laden perfection and paint them so. Irishmen like famed poet-pointer AE (George William Russell) blithely romanticize the already romantic countryside. Patrick Joseph Tuohy's portraits seem both honest and clear, unusual in a day when much portraiture is either smart fawning or sincerity thwarted by theories. Irishmen, in painting as in most of their literature, evoke a racial charm like an opiate which lulls the cry for pro-founder genius.

* Consisting mainly of the works of young Celts, they did not include works of two famed Irishmen, Sir William Orpen and Sir John Lavery.