George Russell [AE] (1867-1935) 'Girl in a Fairy Glen, Donegal' Oil on canvas, 53.5 x 80.5cm, (21 x 31.75'') Signed Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist in 1922 by the family of the...
George Russell [AE] (1867-1935) 'Girl in a Fairy Glen, Donegal' Oil on canvas, 53.5 x 80.5cm, (21 x 31.75'') Signed Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist in 1922 by the family of the present owner. As painter, poet and art critic, AE's mystical theosophist views imbued all his creativities. A fashionable movement in the 1880s, Theosophy challenged traditional notions of religions as separatist movements, believing them all to be different takes and essentially linked to one universal, higher truth. The higher truth can be experienced in the world at large for theosophists and AE's art is very much a reflection on these ideas prevalent at the time he was painting. Such views were happily complimented by traditional Irish mythology - myths of an ideal land inhabited by fairy spirits and a few mortal souls have filtered down through generations. Primary sources for these myths include works such as Lebor na hUidre or the Book of the Dun Cow, written AD1100 and now in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. Indeed, the idea of a utopian world, the land of the ever living lies deep in the Irish conscience. It is this fusion of Irish mythology and theosophy that underpin AE's art as demonstrated in the present work. This painting shows a lush, verdant land of blossoming nature. The fleeting figure of a girl thought to be one of the Law children from Marble Hill, Co Donegal is captured in the foreground. The sense of fantasy and the mystical is enhanced by the glowing light which is cast across the work. The imaginative land of the fairy kingdom held enormous resonance for AE and became for him almost a metaphor for his nationalist ideas. ''We are all seeking today for some glimpse of the fairyland our fathers knew, but all the fairylands, the Silver Cloud world, the Tirnanoge, the Land of the Heart's Desire, are like dreams out of the human soul?'' (AE, from The Book of Imagination and Reveries).
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