Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: Irish women who were ahead of their time
Few artistic relationships have been as long or productive as that maintained by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. In London, Paris and their native Dublin, they created some of the most innovative Irish art of the early 20th century, often in the face of critical opprobrium and the bewilderment of their peers.
A broad selection of their work as pioneers of abstraction and Cubism in this country is currently showing at the National Gallery of Ireland, in the exhibition Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship The two had much in common.
Both came from well-to-do Protestant families, and they were born just a few miles apart, Hone in Donnybrook, Co Dublin in 1894, and Jellett in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin city centre in 1897.
'But their personal experience was a little different,' says the exhibition's curator, Dr Brendan Rooney. 'Hone's parents both died in her childhood, whereas Jellett's family were what you might call more conventionally secure.
'Also, Hone contracted polio at the age of 12, which left her very compromised. A lot of her early years, and particularly her teen years, were spent undergoing various medical procedures in England and elsewhere.
"So it was really tough for her, notwithstanding her privilege.' Both determined early to pursue careers in art. Jellett studied under William Orpen at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, before proceeding to the Westminster Technical Institute in London. It was there that she first encountered Hone, who had already spent some years in London, studying at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts.
At the launch of Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery were Dr Brendan Rooney, head curator; Niamh McNally, curator; and Dr Caroline Campbell, director. Picture: Naoise Culhane
'At Westminster,' says Rooney, 'they would have had a very academic training, with an emphasis on drawing. Both studied under Walter Sickert, among others.' Hone moved to Paris in late 1920, and Jellett followed a few months later. Both were keen to explore new ways of art making. 'They set themselves up as students in this incredible, creative, post-war environment. I think it was in Paris that their friendship really began.'
Initially, they studied under André Lhote, but they soon bored of his brand of representational Cubism, which mainly dealt with landscapes and still life. 'Abstraction was where they wanted to go,' says Rooney. 'It was more extreme, and more reductive, I suppose, as an art form. So they approached Albert Gleizes, and asked that he become their tutor. Gleizes had just turned 40. He was still in the process of formulating his own aesthetic and his own ideas and his own philosophy about art, and probably the last thing he needed was two overenthusiastic Irish students arriving on his doorstep.'
Gleizes had no other students. 'So Jellett and Hone moved into this much more intimate situation, where they became his collaborators, really, and played a key role in the formulation of his ideas.' Jellett and Hone travelled back and forth from Paris to exhibit in Dublin, where their work was often seen as controversial, and never more so than when Jellett exhibited a painting called Decoration at a Society of Dublin Painters exhibition in 1923.
'Decoration was met with anything from suspicion to downright hostility,' says Rooney. 'George Russell - a painter himself, as well as a writer and critic - was among the most outspoken critics. He dismissed Jellett's work as 'artistic malaria.' The Irish Times published a photograph of Decoration and a photograph of an onion side by side, and described her painting as a 'freak.' I mean, this was a really hostile and adversarial sort of language.'
Evie Hone, The Cock and Pot.
The two artists responded to the disparagement of their work in markedly different ways. 'Jellett was emboldened. She really turned to proselytizing about modernism. She lectured. She wrote. She was very industrious. But Hone, I think, was crushed by the criticism. She became more reserved. She even joined an Anglican convent for a year or so. Jellett would not have approved, but she was on hand to collect her friend when she left in January or February of 1927.'
In time, Jellett and Hone's work became more accepted in Irish art circles. Jellett was even invited to design a series of murals for the Ireland Pavilion at the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow in 1937.
Hone, meanwhile, took an interest in stained glass. She retrained at the College of Art and joined An Túr Gloine, the workshop and co-operative founded by Sarah Purser. Before long, she took on a number of significant commissions in the medium.
One of the best known is My Four Green Fields, commissioned by the Department of Industry and Commerce for the Irish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The window now dominates the entrance hall of Government Buildings on Merrion St, Dublin.
In Britain, Hone is celebrated for another work in stained glass, a magnificent Crucifixion in the Chapel at Eton College, Windsor, which she completed between 1949 and 1952. 'That was her magnum opus,' says Rooney. 'It was a colossal undertaking, involving thousands of individual pieces of glass, which she manufactured in Dublin and had shipped over. The window was incredibly well received, and is now accepted as being one of the finest pieces of stained glass created anywhere in the world in the 20th century.'
Despite their success, the two never really became establishment figures. Towards the end of her life, Jellett founded the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, which challenged the dominance of the Royal Hibernian Academy's invariably conservative annual group exhibition. Hone was also involved, along with Norah McGuinness, Fr Jack Hanlon, Hilary Heron and Louis le Brocquy.
Mainie Jellett, The Virgin of Éire.
Sadly, Jellett fell ill with cancer and could not attend the first Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. 'It's one of the great injustices that she never got to see it,' says Rooney. 'And she died before the second exhibition the following year.'
Hone continued to work until her own passing, in 1955. The Irish Exhibition of Living Art outlived them both, surviving into the early 1990s. From the first, Jellett and Hone had insisted that older, more conservative artists – RHA stalwarts such as Seán Keating and James Sleator – be featured alongside younger, bolder creatives, and successive organisers were loyal to that spirit of broadmindedness.
'Jellett and Hone were aware of the importance of the collective,' says Rooney. 'They were inclusive, and emphatically so. They managed to bring people with them, which takes real skill, particularly in a Europe that was fragmented for all sorts of cultural, political reasons. It's a very impressive achievement.'
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship runs at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until August 10. Further information: nationalgallery.ie
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