Munster Fine Art Exhibition.

The seventh annual exhibition of the Munster Fine Art Club is perhaps
the most successful this society has yet held. Naturally, we should
say, for the exhibition has become an institution, and the Gibson
Bequest Committee’s loan of some fine modern pictures considerably
increases the attraction.

The oil paintings, though their number is limited, are, I think, the
better half of the show. The most exciting picture in this group is
surely Jack Yeats’ “On the Skibbereen Light Railway” (No. 260). The
painting is vivid and daring, and in the tense face of the woman
turned towards the solid face of the man there is just a suggestion of
hidden life that no other modern painter I know of, unless it be
Degas, could so well have conveyed. A picture that stands at the very
opposite pole to Yeats’ is De Beaumont’s delightful, old-fashioned
“Poor Relations” (No. 234), where everything seems to have reached
the surface of consciousness as though it were the representation in
pain of one of Lady Gregory’s comedies.

Keating shows in “Quixote” (No. 233) a picture full of fine
painting, tenderness and humour. It is a better example of his art
than either of the pictures by him in our local gallery, and the
Gibson Bequest Committee would be well advised to buy both this
and the Yeats. Their newly-acquired “ De Jonghe ” (No. 227), is an
error of judgment, and for all its technical skill, one of the
dullest pictures in the room.

Miss Gladys Scott is, I suppose, our best local worker, and she
contributes this year something like eight oil-paintings. Her work is
always interesting, sometimes even excellent, but curiously uneven. It
is, for instance, hard to believe that the same hand painted “Sergeant
Cooney” and “The Pipe Major.” I liked best “Sergeant Cooney”
(No. 203) and “Solitude” (No. 258). Brangwyn’s “Fete Day, San
Sebastian” (No. 231) is good Brangwyn, but not particularly inspiring
as anything else. The most interesting of the water-colorists is
Mr. Corkery, whose work is steadily improving. This year he
exhibits a group of landscapes painted in East Cork. The best of these,
to my mind, are “_An Sgamall_” (No. 33), “_Os Cionn na Fairrge_”
(No. 89) and “An Foghmhar” (No. 93), though all are covetable
things. Mr. Harding’s “Moel Fammav” (No. 41) has a simplicity of
grey which is as engaging as the mellowness of Mr. Corkery’s
colouring, while Mr. O’Leary’s exhibits are the best things he has so
far done. Among the others whose work deserves mention may be counted
Miss Gubbins, Lady Dobbin and Mr. H. C. Charde.

At future exhibitions it might, however, be advisable for the
Committee to deliberate further upon their water-colour section which
could easily, one thinks, be less inclusive without being less
representative.

F. O’C.
Irish Statesman, 1927-11-19, p.257