Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
CúchulainnVIII, 1999
Aubusson wool tapestry, 182 x 182 (71¾ x 71¾'')
Signed, numbered 8/9 and titled verso

Provenance: The Shelbourne Hotel...

Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
CúchulainnVIII, 1999
Aubusson wool tapestry, 182 x 182 (71¾ x 71¾'')
Signed, numbered 8/9 and titled verso

Provenance: The Shelbourne Hotel Collection.

 

Louis le Brocquy, one of the most celebrated Irish artists of the 20th century, was initially destined for a career in the family business, the Greenmount Oil Company in Harolds Cross, Dublin. Hence he studied chemistry, not art. But he was more fascinated by painting than petrochemicals and his mother, actively involved in literary life, suggested that he and his fiancée elope to London, where he could see if his artistic aspirations led anywhere. He proved to be a natural, technically adept and quick to appreciate emerging developments. He always maintained that he learned all he knew by studying paintings in the great galleries of Europe and, once back in Ireland in the early 1940s, soon became an important figure in the emerging modernist scene in Irish art.

Active as a designer as well as a painter, he was immediately receptive when The Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers approached him in 1948 and asked him if he would be interested in designing a tapestry. He felt the invitation matched perfectly with his interest in the emotional expressiveness of colour. When he was asked to produce more tapestries, rather than letting skilled weavers work from a painted cartoon, he created detailed, colour-coded, linear templates or patterns. This made the tapestry a unique work rather than a copy of an original, and recalled pre-Renaissance techniques, as espoused by the great Jean Lurçat, who le Brocquy regarded as a mentor. He knew the ideal tapestry weavers to realise these intricate patterns were Atelier Tabard at Aubusson. Thus began a long and fruitful collaboration with Aubusson.

When le Brocquy made his iconic brush and ink drawings for Thomas Kinsellas The Táin in 1969, he quickly realised that they were ideal for use in tapestry. Following on from the drawings he initially worked with black-and-white in works realised by Atelier René Duché at Aubusson. Then he recalled his colour explorations of the 1940s and set about designing Táin tapestries in colour. He visualised Cuchulainns Táin, or raiding party, as band of rugged individualists, and arranged a grid of heads against a radiant background in a virtuoso arrangement of primary and secondary colours. These superb tapestries rank among his finest achievements.

 

Aidan Dunne, May 2019

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