Courtney McGrailJ. Anthony Gaughan
This “interview” features Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) and Eileen Gray (1878-1976). In 1972 it was reported that Chatwin, then still a journalist writing for The Sunday Times Magazine, had interviewed Eileen Gray, the celebrated furniture designer and architect, in her Paris salon.
This was quite a coup for Chatwin in those pre-fame, pre-nomadic days. Shy by nature, throughout her life Gray had long avoided publicity. But the interview was never published.
Patricia O’Reilly provides an imaginary — or shall we say creative — account of it. In so doing, she provides a fascinating pen-picture of the life and times of Eileen Gray.
Born into an Anglo-Irish family near Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Gray studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London and later at similar academies in Paris. She settled in the French capital, established herself as a designer of lacquered furniture and eventually was acknowledged as the greatest western exponent of lacquer. From her early years on the Left Bank she adopted a lifestyle which had very much the flavour of the Belle Époque.
However, while O’Reilly refers to this, she resists the temptation to develop the ‘interview’ into ‘a-kiss-and-tell-story’.
Later in her artistic development, Gray conceived her designs for furniture as an integral part of a building. This led her to architecture, where she was influenced by the functionalism of Jean Badovici and Le Corbusier. During and after World War II, Gray and her contribution to furniture-design drifted out of the public view.
Then in 1972 with the sale of the collection of the celebrated couturier, Jacques Doucat, one of her works set a record price for 20th Century furniture – $36,000. (In 2008 a chair designed by Gray in 1918, her Fauteuil aux Dragons, was sold at auction in Paris for €21.9 million.) This prompted a renewed worldwide interest in her work and she was appropriately honoured by the artistic establishment. For journalists, an interview with the then 93-year-old recluse was a tantalising prospect and Bruce Chatwin was assigned by his editor to conduct it.
Chatwin was well-qualified for the assignment. He began his working life in the Art Department of Sotheby’s in London. Later he himself achieved celebrity status. On leaving journalism he became a successful travel writer and novelist. He was an international socialite and a frequent item in the gossip columns. However, a glittering career was cut short when he died at an early age of Aids.
In her re-creation of the ‘interview’ Patricia O’Reilly skilfully manages the interplay between the interviewer and the interviewee. Both the character and the lifestory of Eileen Gray are revealed as well as the ambivalence of the personality of Bruce Chatwin. His own books too often hover in an area between fiction and reportage.
This ‘interview’ is essentially a well-deserved tribute to two talented and artistic persons who were celebrities at either end of the 20th Century. Well-written and meticulously researched, it will be enjoyed by the general reader as well as aficionados of the arts.
[The Eileen Gray Exhibition, which illustrates her professional development as an innovative architect is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks, Benburb St., Dublin 7. Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm; Sunday: 2pm – 5pm; closed Mondays. A smaller exhibition covering with her local family connections can be seen in Enniscorthy Castle, Co. Wexford. Opening times: 9.30am-5pm, weekends and holiday, 12.00 am to 5pm.]