George Russell AE (1867-1935)
In Some Ancestral Paradise
Oil on canvas, 54 x 82cm (21¼ x 32¼'')
Monogrammed; inscribed verso

 

George W. Russell was born in County Armagh in 1867 and moved...

George Russell AE (1867-1935)
In Some Ancestral Paradise
Oil on canvas, 54 x 82cm (21¼ x 32¼'')
Monogrammed; inscribed verso

 

George W. Russell was born in County Armagh in 1867 and moved to Dublin with his family at the age of 11. Russell became a student at the Metropolitan School of Art in the 1880s and went on to receive further training at the RHA. It was as an art student that Russell first encountered William Butler Yeats, who later recalled how Russell was perpetually bored in life drawing class, far preferring to devote time to painting imaginary compositions gleaned from imaginary worlds. Both Yeats and Russell shared many esoteric interests and maintained a lifelong and occasionally tempestuous friendship. It was also in these years as an art student that Russell began experiencing vivid apparitions. These mystic visions are comparable to those of William Blake and were similarly a vital impetus to Russells work as a painter and poet. A compulsion to understand these visionary occurrences aroused Russells interest in the occult and eventually led him to the Dublin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. Theosophy is an esoteric philosophy that prompts its followers to seek direct knowledge from the mysteries of life and nature. Russell rapidly became a central figure in the movement and many of his earliest writings were published in journals such as the Irish Theosophist. It was in these journals that Russell first used the pseudonym AEON later shorted to AE.

 

An extremely prolific painter, AEs work may be found in public collections throughout Ireland, with particularly notable examples in Trinity College Dublin and Armagh County Museum. While his visionary paintings are comparable to those of Symbolist Gustave Moreau, his landscapes -such as In Some Ancestral Paradise- show the influence of Impressionism, particularly in the use of short and thick strokes of paint to suggest dappled sunlight. AE was an avid supporter of Hugh Lanes efforts to establish a gallery of Modern Art in the city of Dublin and would have had opportunities to view Impressionist paintings such as those by Claude Monet via this affiliation with Lane. AEs oeuvre is comprised primarily of landscapes, portraits and of course fantastical or visionary subjects. However, this painting attests, landscapes and visionary scenes often coalesce; and one is never quite certain if the subject depicted is of this physical world or some supernatural realm. AE was fascinated by folklore and believed that the sídhe populated many of the more untouched parts of rural Ireland which he visited frequently in his role as a spokesman for The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.

 

Pádraic E. Moore, February 2019

 

 

 

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