Harry Kernoff RHA (1900-1974) Funeral in Mayo, 1947 Watercolour, 43 x 56cm (17 x 22'') Signed and dated 1947 Exhibited: Dublin National Gallery of Ireland 'A Time and a Place', October...
Harry Kernoff RHA (1900-1974) Funeral in Mayo, 1947 Watercolour, 43 x 56cm (17 x 22'') Signed and dated 1947 Exhibited: Dublin National Gallery of Ireland 'A Time and a Place', October 2006-January 2007. Harry Kernoff's preference for depicting the colour and activities of urban life was in evidence throughout his career, as he captured the city of Dublin and its varied inhabitants. While many of these citizens were friends and acquaintances of the artist, observed in their regular haunts, most were random people. Portraying them at work or socialising in the shops, bars, parks, back alleys and beaches of the city, Kernoff provided a wonderful record of Dublin during his life time. He also looked beyond the capital for inspiration, however, and from about 1934 onwards made regular painting trips to Kerry and the west of Ireland. Attracted by Mayo in particular, he visited Castlebar and the coastal town of Westport on a number of occasions.56 The setting for Kernoff's painting A Funeral in Mayo is easily identifiable by the ridge formation and triangular profile of Croagh Patrick in the background. Famous as a site of pilgrimage, in the course of which thousands of people climb to its summit each year, the mountain slopes steeply into Clew Bay, just south of Westport. In the foreground of Kernoff's painting a funeral party makes its way along an uneven road. The coffin, borne on the shoulders of six men, is accompanied by just a small gathering of people, suggesting the remote and relatively sparsely populated area in which the funeral takes place. The prominence of a pub or shop in the middle ground - one can make out the name of the proprietor on a sign above the door - is appropriate to both the social and commercial importance of such premises in rural areas. Shops of this kind, found throughout Ireland, were known to host numerous businesses including drapers, general stores, grocers, butchers, and even, in more isolated areas, undertaking. 57 Under the Coroners Act of 1846, a coroner could direct that a dead body be brought to the nearest 'tavern, public house or house licensed for the sale of spirits' and require the owner or occupier of such a place to allow the body to be kept there until an inquest had taken place. 58 Before the age of the motorised ambulance and hearse, this provision made good sense as publicans usually had cool store rooms in which bodies could be kept from decomposing. Kernoff counters the looming presence of the mountain and tempers the maudlin subject through the use of bright colour and the slightly caricatured portrayal of the figures in the foreground. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art during a period that promoted an academic tradition to which figurative drawing was central, and was, an accomplished draughtsman.59 His naive and often awkward depiction of the figure, therefore, was a deliberate subversion of this academic tradition. It has been observed that Kernoff's compassionate and personal approach 'reflected his own gentle consideration for his subject'. 60 His work was admired and when he began to exhibit at the RHA his paintings of Mayo, the settings for which were vastly different from those of his Dublin scenes, it would appear they were received equally well, one critic making the astute observation that: Harry Kemoff has gone west and brought with him the vivid eye and quaint technique that enabled him to record the subtle moods of the Dublin scene. In his paintings of the Mayo mountains he has given a new twist to the Irish Landscape. 61 The painting, executed in watercolour, reminds one of Kernoff's graphic wood-cuts, which were executed in a clear, linear style and were often theatrical in nature. This graphic style accommodated the attention to detail that Kernoff displayed but was neglected by many of his contemporaries in favour of painterly effects and atmosphere. Details such as the name above a shop, merchandise on sale, individual bottles on the shelf of a bar, or the fruit and vegetables of a roadside grocer characterized his work in various media. Essential but banal, such details were always of interest to Kernoff and afforded his work a notable local quality. This interest in the minutiae of his subjects may be attributable to Kernoff's work in theatre set design, a practice that also seems to have informed the narrative and dramatic quality of his work. In A Funeral in Mayo, the figures appear to stumble in from 'right of stage' and the landscape in the background, thinly painted, serves as a scenic backdrop. The grazing cow, meanwhile, presented in profile and painted in flat colour, seems more like a stage prop than a living animal. Kernoff was a member of a dynamic social group that included artistic, literary and theatrical figures. He drew and painted many of them and designed sets and costumes for theatrical productions, including some at the Gate Theatre, where he worked alongside Martin Murphy, a figure who appears in his In Davy's Parlour Snug (cat.72). 62 Writer: Donal Maguire 56 Kernoff exhibited a number of his paintings of Castlebar and Westport at the RHA between, 1945 and 1955. 57 Kearns 1996, p.53. 58 This legal provision was not removed until 1962. 59 He studied under Harry Clarke, Patrick Tuohy and Sean Keating. 60 McAuley 2003, p.111. 61 Irish Independent, 25 April 1949. 62 MacGonigal 1976, p.4 Reproduced by kind permission of Dr. Brendan Rooney editor ''A Time and a Place'' National Gallery of Ireland.
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