Over eighty portraits of more than thirty renowned Irish cultural figures, completed over a sixteen-year period by the Anglo-Belgian painter Anthony Palliser, will be on display at Farmleigh Gallery, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, this summer.
Featured in the exhibition will be paintings and drawings of individuals who have, over the past fifty years, contributed significantly to the development of Irish cultural life and its international reputation and appreciation. These include Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Paddy Moloney, Siobhán Armstrong, Thomas Kinsella, Edna O’Brien, John Boorman, Colm Tóibín, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Brian Friel, Bill Whelan, John Banville, Sinéad Cusack, John Montague, Paul Muldoon, John Hurt and the late The Honourable Garech Browne, amongst many others. To be unveiled at the exhibition will be Palliser’s recently-completed portrait of the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins.
To coincide with the exhibition, there will be a programme of events in June and July, including talks by the writer and Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole, as well as poet and former Farmleigh writer-in-residence Theo Dorgan.
This exhibition has been curated by Kieran Owens, and is being presented by the Office of Public Works and the British Council as a major contribution to the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018.
It will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, containing contributions by John Boorman, Lara Marlowe, Sophie Gorman and Anthony Palliser. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of The Honourable Garech Browne, who died in March of this year.
About the artist:
Anthony Palliser was born in Brussels in 1949, the son of Sir Michael Palliser and Marie Marguerite Spaak. His paternal grandfather was Admiral Sir Eric Palliser, an important British naval officer during the Second World War, and his maternal grandfather was Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian statesman and one of the founding fathers of the European Union.
Having received his early education at the Catholic Downside school, Palliser briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and went on to graduate from New College Oxford, after which, in 1971, he moved to his beloved Paris, where he still lives with his wife, Diane Lawyer.
Forever working and tackling different themes, Palliser has produced many first-rate portraits of a wide variety of internationally recognised personalities and friends from the worlds of the arts and politics, including Marianne Faithful, Kenzo Takada, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sir Michael Howard and Charlotte Rampling, to name but a few. His masterful portrait of Graham Greene hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Palliser’s selection of Irish subjects began in 2002 with a painting of the poet Derek Mahon, to whom he was introduced by Garech Browne of Luggala. A long-time friend of Browne, it was through him that Palliser developed his contacts and relationships with many of the individuals who are featured in this exhibition.
The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon recently compared the portrait to a time machine. It is in exactly this context that Palliser’s exceptional paintings and drawings work so well, capturing each sitter at a particular moment in time, usually at the peak of their artistic powers and standing, and, in this case, especially in regards to the widespread recognition that they have received, at home and abroad, for their contributions to Irish culture.
Through his brush, pen and pencil, Palliser has distilled, to the fundamental spiritual level, the character of each of his subjects. The result is a peeling away of the outward, self-protecting layers of each person’s public persona and the laying bare, for all to see, face to face, of each sitter’s inner, private world. From the drawing of a simple line, their essence and dignity has been gently revealed.
Exhibition Support Programme schedule
June 2018
Saturday 3 June: Theo Dorgan - 'Vision into Vision: Poetry & Portraiture'
Saturday 9 June: James Hanley, RHA - 'The Art of Portraiture'
Saturday 16 June: Robert O'Byrne - 'A Magnet for Artists: Luggala and Garech Browne'
Saturday 23 June: Karen O'Connor - Children's Portraiture Sessions
Saturday 30 June: Fintan O'Toole - 'Portraiture as Criticism'
July 2018
Saturday 7 July: Karen O'Connor - Children's Portraiture Sessions
Saturday 14 July: Tunes for Garech - an Irish traditional music summer session
Saturday 21 July: David Hicks - 'Portraits, Painters & the Irish Country House'
Saturday 28 July: Ronan Browne - 'Pipers, Portraits & Planxties'
All of the individual talks will run from 3pm until 4pm, and the children's sessions will run in the morning and afternoon, to cater for different age groups. The ‘Tunes for Garech - an Irish traditional music summer session’ event will run from 2pm until 5pm.
