User:MJellet/sandbox

= Mainie Jellett[edit] = Mary Harriet "Mainie" Jellett (29 April 1897, Dublin – 16 February 1944, Dublin) was an Irish painter whose Decoration (1923) was among the first abstract paintings shown in Ireland when it was exhibited at the Society of Dublin Painters Group Show in 1923. Jellett was born and raised in Dublin at Fitzwilliam Square West. Later she moved to 24 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin 2 where she is now honoured with a plaque.

Life[edit]
Jellett was born on 29 April 1897 at 36 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, the daughter of William Morgan Jellett, a barrister and later MP, and Janet McKenzie Stokes. Mainie Jellett was the eldest of four, Dorothea, Rosanna and Elizabeth, and daughter of future MP, William Morgan and Janet Jellett.

Jellett studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. At the age of 18 Jellett left her Dublin home and traveled to London to study under Walter Sickert at the Westminster Technical Institute. Jellett once said it was in London that "drawing and composition came alive" to her. She showed precocious talent as an artist in the impressionist style. Later, she moved to Paris with her companion Evie Hone, where, working under André Lhote and Albert Gleizes she encountered cubism and began an exploration of non-representational art laying down the foundation of the style in which Jellett is renown for. After 1921 she and Evie Hone returned to Dublin where she would teach art to private students but for the next decade she continued to spend part of each year in Paris maintaining close contact with Albert Gleizes and his artistic ideas. It was in 1923 where Jellett's work would first be put onto display to the Irish public. Jellett's modern art style was met with positive criticism though was branded "controversial" and "freakish" by a majority Catholic audience. In 1935 Jellett returned to London for a full year in an attempt to gain insight into oriental art. During this time the "Winter Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House" was on display which Jellett stated was the reason behind her London return. The art at the exhibition formed a lasting impression on Jellett who ever since began practising landscape art in various forms. On her return to Ireland Jellett began to focus on Irish art and became some what of a critic on the strengths and weaknesses of Irish art. Jellett had now adapted her style following the hostility which was shown towards her previous works in Ireland attempting to appeal more to the Catholic Irish audiences. It was these political and religious views which Jellett states influenced her work in later life often painting abstract Catholic and Celtic symbols.

Jellett was an important figure in Irish art history, both as an early proponent of abstract art and as a champion of the modern movement. Her painting was often attacked critically but she proved eloquent in defence of her ideas. Along with Evie Hone, Louis le Brocquy, Jack Hanlon and Norah McGuinness, Jellett co-founded the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943.

Influences:

Mainie Jellett left her home country of Ireland at eighteen and travelled to London to work with Walter Sickert. It was in London, under the guidance of Walter Sickert, that Mainie began drawing and forming compositions by studying work done by previous European artists that worked during the eighteen-hundreds, known as the “Old Masters ”. This was the first of Mainie’s, self-professed, "three revolutions". From London, Mainie travelled to Paris, where she first met, and began to work with, André Lhote. Mainie’s time working Lhote in Paris allowed her to study modern French art and paintings, in particular. Through this study and the deepening of her study on the “Old Masters”, Mainie began to understand, both, cubism and a non-representational style of painting which was common in France in the early nineteen-hundreds. Mainie’s new understanding of art through the teachings of Lhote was her second revolution, and led her to search for a deeper understanding of these new techniques. This search for a deeper understanding kept her Paris but led her to leave the workshop of André Lhote and meet another popular cubist and non-representational artist of the time, Albert Gleizes. It was Albert Gleizes that brought Mainie to her “third revolution”. Through the teachings of Albert Gleizes, Mainie studied an original form of cubism and more non-representational works. It was this new understanding of drawing and painting that influenced her work throughout her life, such as her "Decoration", and one that she carried with her on her return to Ireland. Mainie did travel to London in 1935 to visit the Winter Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House to study Oriental Art, specifically Chinese Art, as this was a style of art that intrigued and influenced her later in life.

Religion and Art[edit]
A deeply committed Christian (Anglo-Irish Protestant) her paintings, though strictly non-representational, often have religious titles and often resemble icons in tone and palate. Her religious beliefs often caused conflict and provoked hostility amongst the predominate Catholic beliefs of the Irish population. In Irish Art, a Concise History Bruce Arnold writes that
 * "Many of her abstracts are built up from a central 'eye' or 'heart' in arcs of colour, help up and together by the rhythm of line and shape, and given depth and intensity - a sense of abstract perspective - by the basic understanding of light and colour".

Critiques of Irish Art

The beliefs that Mainie Jellett formed about art and it should be viewed were created from the work she did with her three main influences; Walter Sickert, André Lhote and Albert Gleizes. Through her work with these people Mainie formed the belief that is similar to that of the “Modern Movement” of art. This view of art states that art should be influenced by many sources and cultures and we should not follow the old school materialism or tradition. Mainie states that;

“The art of a nation is one of the ultimate facts by which its spiritual health is judged and appraised by posterity, and in many cases when all else has disappeared the clue to a whole civilisation may be traced through fragments of pottery, sculpture, or other artistic manifestations which may remain”

This belief or viewing of art was met with stern opposition in Ireland at the time. Thus, most of her artistic time spent in Ireland, was spent criticising those that did not follow this view, Mainie particularly criticised three aspects of Irish art; Localism, Marginalisation and critics themselves. Localism is the view that Irish art should not be influenced by modern movements or an aspect outside of Ireland. It involves the artist to focus on “the sense of place”, as stated by Brian Fallon, and the artist to remain connected with the landscape around them. Two people, in particular, were criticised by Mainie Jellett for having this belief. The first being, Brian Fallon and, the second, Brian O’Doherty. Mainie criticised the belief that we should ignore nationalism, the right, and modernism, the left, in terms of art, and be in the middle of these two sides. Mainie believed that this marginalisation of both sides, commonly leads to the left, modernism, being avoided, and finding a spot somewhere in the right, nationalism. This provincialism of the left, according to Mainie, is a trap that many Irish art critics fall into, such as Dorothy Walker. Many Irish art critics forget, or choose to ignore, the dirtier side of art that was a foundation of Irish art, according to Mainie.

Death[edit]
Jellett died Febuary 16th 1944 aged 46 of pancreatic cancer. She never married nor had she had children. Her possessions were left to her younger sister, but the second eldest in the Jellett family, Dorothea Jellett.

Work in Collections[edit]

 * Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, including:
 * Composition (c. 1935)
 * Niland Art Collection, Sligo
 * Butler Gallery Collection, Kilkenny
 * Trinity College, Dublin
 * The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin
 * The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
 * Four Element Composition (1930)
 * The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
 * [Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery,Waterford Municipal Art Collection, Waterford.

References[edit]

 * Claire Dalton (2014) http://adams.auctioneersvault.com/catalogues/70714/70714.html#1 "Irish Women Artists 1870 - 1970" Adams Summer Loan Exhibition 2014
 * Daire O'Connell (2002), Jellet, Mary Harriet (Mainie) in Brian Lalor (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Ireland. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-3000-2
 * Bruce Arnold (1977), Irish Art, a Concise History (2nd Ed.), London: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-20148-X
 * Crookshank, Anne; White, James; Brooke, Peter. Mainie Jellett 1897-1944. Irish Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 1-873654-01-4
 * Mainie Jellett, 'My Voyage of Discovery', (1943), in F. Cullen, Sources in Irish Art - A Reader, (2000), pp.86-91

External Links[edit]

 * "Irish Women Artists 1870 - 1970" Adams Summer Loan Exhibition 2014 http://adams.auctioneersvault.com/catalogues/70714/70714.html#1
 * Irish Arts Review article about the Irish Exhibition of Living Art
 * Short biography on the RTÉ website
 * Jellett Family Census Record 1911 http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000208108