Mainie H Jellett Exhibition
A Machine Readable Version
Thomas MacGreevy
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Full Colophon Information[p.3]
Miss Jellett, whose exhibition of paintings in oil and gouache opened at The Gallery, 7 Stephen's Green yesterday, is the least compromising as she is the best trained of what might be described as the experimental school of contemporary Irish artists. Her work is largely analytical. Thus "Nativity" may be taken as an attempt to establish the æsthetic essentials of the appeal of a Fra Angelico or Filippo Lippi masterpiece. There is no delineation of the features of the Madonna or the Divine Child, no search for types, nothing but the bowed figure of the Mother adoring the Baby. Yet the drawing is so good and the colours are so harmonious that the reverent mood of religious art is at once recalled. Similarly with "The Ninth Hour". Traditional taste, harking back to the art of Perugino and Raphael, which made Calvary a serene rather than a tragic place, might easily be tempted to an immediate repudiation of Miss Jellett's sombre tone and dynamic composition. Here the artist, again without elaboration of detail in the matter of features, uses line and colour to suggest a cataclysmic moment of history; and is, of course, justified in the result. This, in fact, is the kind of art which shakes us out of our complacency.
On the other hand, Miss Jellett can create the essence of happier moods with equally unmistakeable success, and " Sligo Memory", "Winter Landscape", and "Bog and Sea", as well as half-a-dozen studies of prancing horses on western seashores are as radiant in temper as they are restrained in technique. And delightful memories are evoked by her gay stage sets for the "Puck Fair" ballet produced at the Gaiety Theatre last February.