Home-Brew

Even the Irish have never made much of their own art; James Joyce once called it the cracked looking glass of a servant. The fashions of London, Rome and Paris were often reflected, secondhand and second-rate, in Irish painting. This week a Manhattan gallery exhibited the work of twelve Irish painters, who reflected not Europe but Dublin, the ragged hills of Connemara and the midlands around Tullamore.

Most of the twelve had found their own styles during the war years, when neutral Ireland was left to stew in its own juices. They shared a liking for landscape, and misty Irish light--like Patrick Hennessy's silvery, ruined Cathedrals (see cut). Their leader was veteran Impressionist Jack Butler Yeats, brother of poet William.

Best of the lot was a Dubliner whose name had none of the old sod in it. Louis Le Brocquy (rhymes with rocky), is only 29. His watercolors were roughly rubbed with wax and scarred with nervous jabs and dashes of India ink. He liked to paint Ireland's tinkers: the wandering tinsmiths and horse jobbers whose ability to turn broken nags into one-day blood horses, for sale at country fairs, is the stuff of Irish legend. One Le Brocquy painting of a little girl bathing in a canal (see cut) spoke of children everywhere.

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