Peter Costello
Gerard Byrne is a Dublin-based artist with a studio in Ranelagh. A leading figure in the Irish art world, for some time he has been painting streetscapes in the Rathmines and Pembroke areas, which have already attracted a lot of attention.
I met him at work recently, painting the oldest house in Wellington Place in Upper Leeson Street, a small Regency villa with a reputed connection to the Duke of Wellington. This may well be a local legend, and should be taken with a pinch of salt.
This project has been given an added impetus by the circumstances of the pandemic. An artist working alone in the open air has little difficulty achieving social distancing, and Byrne is working in any case with about half an hour’s walk of his studio home.
Under the more severe regulations he has begun working from the flat roof of his studio gallery, painting what he can see across the urban panorama. This interests me greatly as one of our first apartments was in the house next door to his).
What he now paints I could once see from my work room and our sitting room, and the results fascinate me.
Figures
But aside from that he is painting streets scenes with figures such as most recent painters have abandoned. However, they remind me of some of the 1930s paintings of Harry Kernoff (another urban painter whose studio was in Stamer Street), and also the work of Estella Solomons (whose studio for the last decades of her life was on Morehampton Road).
I suspect that just as their images are now greatly valued by artists and historians, so these present pictures by Gerard Byrne will also be greatly admired in decades to come.
He paints in a broad vigorous manner, with a bold palette of colours. Though the scenes are often quiet ones, and often free of figures, they abound with their own creative energy. This is a show to see: it will refresh the spirits of all of us at this time.
The painting (shown here) is of the two small houses at the junction of Ashfield Road/Mornington Road in Ranelagh. I love these, partly I think because for me they carry a special emotional appeal, as I used to pass them almost daily from school in the old days at Gonzaga College. They are connected in my mind with a sense of post-regulation freedom to do what I liked with my time.
‘A Pause for Harmony’, Gerard Byrne Studio, 16 Chelmsford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6; September 16-October 25, 2020. For information visit gerardbyrneartist.com , or tel: 498-2909.