Dublin: Light and Shade
Every time I go to the National Gallery I try to spend at least ten or fifteen minutes looking at my favourite painting there – ‘In a Dublin park, Light and Shade’, by Walter Osborne. Born into an affluent family in Rathmines in 1859, Osborne’s father William had a well established career as a society painter specialising in paintings of horses and dogs for the upper levels of society. Walter learned from his father that there was money to be made from painting portraits of the wealthy and their beloved animals; and set about building a successful career in doing so. His real interest however was observing and documenting the lives of Dublin’s poor, regularly spending time in the city centre and making preparatory studies for a celebrated series of paintings, of which this is one.
It is a medium sized painting, with a relatively simple composition; a small group of random strangers sitting side by side on a park bench on a summer’s afternoon. A mother holds a sleeping baby on her lap; on her right sits her older son of around eight years old; on her left sit two older men; who may or may not be associates; their ambivalent body language makes it all the difficult to understand their relationship. They may literally have had their first conversation with each other since sitting on that bench. Sitting on the bench, all six are dappled by the sunlight through the leaves overhead; enjoying a brief respite from their weary, busy lives.
When I first really looked at this painting I was mostly taken up with its technical virtuosity; it has a wonderful sense of colour and space and – given its title of course – light and shade. Looking at it now though I found myself wondering about the lives and backstories of its characters. The woman, caught in a parabola of beaming sunlight, looks haggard and drawn, and the day to day grift of living in Dublin and raising two small children has etched deep lines of exhaustion and sadness into her face. Beside her, her older son goggles at the park around him; life has not used him too roughly as yet, but looking at the two older men in the painting one can tell that it is only a matter of time before this happens, for the time being he looks at the world around him with innocence and excitement. On the right, the two men sit quietly, resigned to their lives and respective fates. They are probably both still working; one doesn’t imagine that there was any great provision for the elderly and infirm and those unable to support themselves. Maybe they have been out looking for employment – they certainly seem to be dressed with some care and attention – and probably have been unable to find any.
On the Saturday before last I did another turn around the National Gallery of Ireland, and on the Sunday trekked up in the bucketing rain to Russborough House in County Wicklow to go to their Annual Art Car Boot Sale. There was some lovely work on display, but I would find it difficult to think of a more painfully middle-class event that I have ever attended. I don’t remember ever seeing so many Barbour jackets, tweed and labradors in one place, and so many people being totally convinced of their bohemian, non-conformist lifestyle, despite driving Landrovers the size of the Dublin- Holyhead ferry and wearing €150 Hunter Wellington boots. Again, I found myself again thinking of Osborne and his work featuring the poverty-stricken of Dublin, and what he would make of it today.
On an afternoon last week I cycled out the front gate of NCAD – another achingly middle-class institution – and made my way down to the quays. In that short journey, a space of about 500m and three minutes, I counted five unfortunates in doorways injecting drugs or staggering around on the pavement, weaving their way around American tourists and local workers out for their lunch. I wonder how Osborne would have depicted them; indeed how he would have even interacted with them. Such sordid misery and dreariness seemed to be so far away from the opulent and grand surroundings of Russborough House (and I write from the happy position of having been able to enjoy it.) I guess there is a grand statement here to be made about art and it’s place in society; those who can enjoy it, experience it, study it or even make a living from it; but what of people who are not in an economic position to do any of these things? Like those in Osborne’s painting, are they merely to be treated as subject matter,to be depicted by middle-class artists to remind their audience of their own good fortune?
Anyway, it’s raining this morning, so I’m just going to pull on my Hunter wellies before I hit the road in my hybrid 4×4……..