George William Russell (“AE”) (1867-1935) 'Portrait of a Y...

Hammer

€2,400

George William Russell (“AE”) (1867-1935)

'Portrait of a Young Girl in a white Dress holding Flowers,' O.O.C., 62 cms x 51cms (24.5" x 20" ). (1)

The term ‘Celtic Twilight’ accurately describes the art of George Russell, with many of his paintings depicting scenes of childhood. He delighted in creating a fantasy world, peopled with mythological beings. In such paintings, suffused with the glow of wistful nostalgia, his figures, generalized rather than specific portraits, are enveloped in a haze. This portrait of a young girl however is more formal, and depicts an actual rather than an imagined person. Dressed in a white muslin pinafore dress over a blue blouse, her dark hair tied with a bow, the girl sits in a chair looking out at the observer with a curiously determined expression. In her hands she holds a small spray of flowers. The background is a uniform brown deepening to a dark shadow behind the girl, and the initials of the painter ‘AE’ are painted the top right corner. The identity of the sitter is not known; it may be an early portrait of Kitsy Franklin, whose mother Victoria Franklin was the sister of the writer Susan Mitchell, who edited the Irish Statesman and was a close friend of Russell.

Adopting the initials ‘AE’ as his signature or monogram, Russell is remembered today as one of the leading cultural figures of the Irish Literary Revival. In addition to being a painter, he was also an influential economist, editor, and promoter of rural development. Practical, and well versed in politics and economics, Russell nonetheless also believed in the existence of a spiritual world, inhabited by ethereal beings. Influenced by Symbolist artists such as Gustave Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes, he espoused Theosophy and esoteric religions, giving expression to this vision through a prolific output of paintings, novels, plays and poetry.

Born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, as a child Russell moved to Dublin with his family. After studying at the Metropolitan School of Art, in 1887 he began working for the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, and edited the IAOS newspaper, the Irish Homestead. Alongside these practical concerns, he found time to study esoteric religions, joining the Dublin Theosophical Society in 1888, and later forming the ‘Hermetic Society’. He was also involved with drama, in 1902 becoming vice-president of the Irish National Theatre Society (later the Abbey Theatre Company). His plays include Deirdre, (1902), while his first book of poetry, Homeward: Songs by the Way, published in 1894, was followed by his 1913 Collected Poems. In addition to painting, plays and poetry, Russell wrote on agricultural policy and political theory, in The Building up of a Rural Civilisation (1910), and The National Being (1916). He was highly regarded as an artist, and, in 1913, with the support and encouragement of the lawyer John Quinn, his paintings were shown at the Armory Show in New York. Encouraged also by William Butler Yeats, Russell painted murals depicting his mystical visions, at 3 Upper Ely Place, headquarters of the Theosophical Society. He also painted portraits, of Yeats, Lady Gregory and others.

Dr. Peter Murray, February 2022