Category: Essays

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If you take time to read the essay below thank you very much. It was published at the beginning of last month (Nov.2022) in Senior Times magazine so that accounts for the semi-apology for broaching the subject of Christmas so early. But only semi. The truth is that by now it’s not that ‘Christmas comes but once a year’ but that it arrives earlier and earlier every year. No sooner has Hallowe’en been shut down than images of Santa and his reindeers start to appear. All driven by market forces of course, especially supermarket forces. Some years ago I wrote the following short poem about Hallowe’en’s appearance in the shopping aisles and about how the Devil himself has suffered from too much exposure, leading to the diminution of his power to strike fear into any heart that saw him (or even thought they saw him).

The Old Enemy

I recognise him straight away.

The hooves. I’m disappointed

that he has no horns. There’s a tail,

and do I get a whiff of sulphur?

The aisle is full of Hallowe’en:

witch hats, inflatable corpses,

faux skeletons hanging from the ceiling.

But his stare is vacant and he seems

a little lost among the plastic pumpkins,

ersatz blood and grinning skulls.

And much, much smaller than I remember.

That sort of fear of Satan now firmly belongs to Old God’s Time. Not so much with the Christian message of Christmas but it still has a lot to do to struggle out from under the bumper boxes of chocolates, seasonal turkey recipes and American-style outdoor Christmas lighting. I hope you enjoy the essay and I ask that you please take particular note of the last paragraph …

‘Tis the Season ..

Eamonn Lynskey considers some Christmas customs old and new.

November has swung around again and everyone begins to think of Christmas. Well, that’s not quite true. Even before Hallowe’en the yuletide preparations were well underway. The once popular yearly Church calendar of saints’ days is now replaced by the commercial exigencies of the supermarket. And no sooner have the witches’ hats, faux-cobwebs and plastic pumpkins been cleared from the aisles than the red-cheeked Santas and boxed fake pine-trees begin to make their appearance. Then comes the endless and inescapable playing of Christmas songs, ancient and modern. In these final months of the year, every time you venture out to get your few rashers and eggs you take your sanity in your hands.

But I don’t want this bit of scribble to turn into a ‘bah-humbug’ piece of curmudgeonry and bad-tempered writing. I enjoy Christmas as much as anyone else. It’s a great family time, particularly if some members arrive home from years in exile. And the giving and receiving of gifts is a wonderful experience, even if the gift makes one think immediately of a donation to the charity shop. So yes, it’s a great festival but, nevertheless, I think I may be permitted to voice impatience at some aspects which I find rather hard to take and I suspect others may share some of my views.

Our Christmases have by now become a mixture of diverse cultural borrowings. You might say that this is a reflection of the way our Republic of Ireland has become a nation of diverse peoples, far removed from when it saw itself as a homogenous Catholic nation. But this diversification of Christmas had begun long before we became a multi-ethnic society. By the time I came on the scene (I’m talking 1950s) the festival was already a compendium of myth and folklore, gathered around the story of the Nativity. And influenced by the imagination of Charles Dickens.

Roman Catholic Ireland of the 1950s was a different society to the one we have today and St Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus was central to the celebration of Christmas. There used to be life-sized representations in Churches of the stable where the great event occurred and this continues to the present, though on a reduced scale. There also used to be much smaller ‘cribs’ in people’s houses: Joseph and Mary around the new-born child in the manger, as Luke had described, surrounded by animals, which Luke had not described. Neither had he said that the shepherds and the three wise men had arrived together to pay homage, but these were minor details. The story of the coming of the child who will save mankind is surely one of the most entrancing of all time, though somewhat overshadowed today by the commercial interests of the marketplace.

As to the imagination of Charles Dickens – once so dominant in the Christmas iconography of my younger days – his influence has by now faded, though a tincture remains. There are still many Christmas cards that bear the imprint of that long-gone Dickensian world of horse-drawn coaches rolling into town in a snowy blizzard. And there are still some jolly Pickwickian old gentlemen to be seen pictured sipping their mulled wine behind the mulled windows of wayside taverns. But they are a disappearing species, although Ebenezer Scrooge and his Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future still survive in yearly revivals on stage and screen of Charles’ ever-popular seasonal story ‘A Christmas Carol’.

How come this longevity? Well, it’s down to the wonderful writing of course. Dickens was a master of the English Language. But probably his story has lasted all the more because it neatly encompasses what we would like to think is at the heart of the festival itself: the defeat of ill-will by the supernatural power of The Good. And how there must be room for everyone at the table no matter how scant the fare.

Such was the influence of Dickens. In decline now, before an indiscriminate assortment of images that are not very specific to the celebration of the Nativity. The Christmas tree has gone so much from strength to strength that it alone on a Christmas card, even bereft of decoration, evokes immediately the whole festival in all its variegated jollity. It seems like it was always there amongst us, winking its electric lights and shining out its baubles. But it wasn’t.

As is common knowledge, when Prince Albert arrived from Germany to woo the young Victoria, it was love at first sight. Much less successful was his hope to bring his wisdom to the English nation and to leave his mark on their political affairs. The British parliament soon put him wise on that score. The only lasting mark he left on English culture was the Christmas tree, a German custom that had long been part of the German Christmas and was an immediate success among the gentry of Britain and Ireland. Soon it became popular among all classes and has by now come to be the pre-eminent symbol of the celebrations.

And what is it that has kept Christmas cards so popular in this age of the email, the Zoom, the Skype and the WhatsApp? Yes, there are those who have changed over to the practice of sending digital greetings to their friends at Christmas, thereby saving themselves the bother and expense of sending actual paper cards with written good wishes. Nevertheless, packets of cards still appear on sale during November and are readily bought up. It seems that people are still intent on imparting a personal touch to the act of greeting others, especially their nearest and dearest, and do not favour sending a generic email message that has a ‘business-like’ feel about it; one which says: ’I’d like to wish you a Happy Christmas but in the shortest and least bothersome way possible’ (my addition in italics). Sometimes the sender even forgets to use the Bcc computer option which hides other recipients and one sees that the exact same message has gone out to several other ‘friends’. So much for sincerity! An actual card, with even just a sentence or two, is always much more appreciated. In the matter of Christmas good wishes, emails just don’t cut it.

Now please give me leave to mention my own particular bête noir: Christmas lights. And yes, I do understand the atavistic need we all have to brighten these winter days, the darkest of the year. And no, I am not criticising the City Fathers’ attempts to bring some cheer to the city centre. I am talking about the increasingly garish electrical adornment of suburban houses. This type of outdoor decoration began with the placing of a few electric bulbs in the front garden, in a tree or a bush perhaps, ‘to brighten things up’. Fine. However, of recent years, and under the influence (I think) of American TV and movies, electrical lighting has started to cover the whole front facades of suburban houses, complete with neon-enabled ‘on-off’ colours which have a terrible effect on those of us whose eyes have become somewhat sensitive over the years. Santa and his reindeers and elves often feature too, cascading down a roof illuminated by a host of white electric mini-bulbs simulating snow. It will be interesting to see if these expensive demonstrations of ‘good cheer’ will survive our 2022/23 cost-of-living crisis when even boiling an egg will become a BIG DECISION, thanks to escalating electricity bills.

These displays are a long way from the era in which it was the custom to place a candle in the front window to guide the wayfarer along dark winding rural roads and perhaps to the offer of a bed for the night. Suburbia put paid to that kindly notion, but yet the occasional candle is still seen in housing estates windows. Old customs die hard. Sometimes too one sees the seven-branched candle-stick, a symbol of the Jewish people and a reminder that Jesus himself was a Jew. Perhaps too this can be a poignant reminder of sufferings endured in the past and of the need for us to be men and women of good will towards others.

The mention of Santa’s reindeers reminds me that there is one iconic symbol of Christmas without which Christmas would not be, well … Christmas. Santa’s red and white outfit and flowing white beard reminds us of his great ancestor, Saint Nicholas, who saved the three poor sisters from being sold into slavery by providing them with dowries so that they could be decently married. I always liked that story and I find in our Santa the embodiment of that generosity – a virtue which we hope will outlast the season and stay with us into the New Year, no matter how many disappointments land on us. As for Santa’s reindeer, the temptation is to think that these are (like Prince Albert’s tree) some kind of cultural import. Not so. The bone fragments of reindeer consumed by humans have been found in Ireland, dating back to our ancestors of 35,000 years ago when land bridges linked us to other territories far and wide.

I have not enough space to consider traditional Christmas carols, though their history is as interesting as any other. It’s true to say too that most of the lyrics are wonderful (‘… when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even’) although their constant playing three or four weeks before Christmas Day takes a good deal of the shine off them and, as mentioned, makes shopping in the local supermarket something of an ordeal. But it is the endless playing of popular Christmas songs that is a particular penance.  I always had a soft spot for Brenda Lee, and still have, though having to listen to her endlessly Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree for weeks every year has put a severe strain on our relationship. And I do not trust myself to put down on paper anything about that chap who sings that he wishes it could be Christmas every day. Is he mad or what?

Finally, I want to thank you so much for taking time to read this piece. Despite the objections and reservations outlined above, I want it known that I intend to enjoy my festive season, as always. And that I wish the blessings of the season on each and every one of you and on your families and friends.

My thanks to the Senior Times magazine for publishing this article.

See the website http://www.seniortimes.ie

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A Ship against the Mew Stone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound
Photo (c) National Gallery of Ireland

This time of year I would be looking forward to visiting the annual Turner exhibition in the National Gallery of Ireland. Not this year of course, with the coronavirus rampant. Last year I wrote the essay below, which was published in the Senior Times magazine and I offer it to those who admire Turner’s work and, like me, feel singularly disappointed that they cannot meet him again this year. The paintings / drawings mentioned in the essay are exquisitely reproduced in the the Gallery’s publication, The Works of J.M.W Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland (above), compiled by Anne Hodge and Niamh Mac Nally, and available from the Gallery. Give yourself an excellent New Year’s present! Also, please have a look the gallery website at https://www.nationalgallery.ie for great information and talks on its paintings,, including Turner.

My thanks to the National Gallery of Ireland and to the National Portrait Gallery, London, for permission to reproduce some of Turner’s works.

Time Again for Turner

January again and it’s time to view the Turner watercolours and drawings at the National Gallery of Ireland. Susceptibility to damage caused by exposure to too much light means that they are kept under wraps for the rest of the year and so a visit to view them has become something of a ceremony, almost akin to the journey people make to Newgrange for the solstice. It is an event that marks the opening chapter of a new year still in its infancy and that has yet to reveal its epiphanies and pitfalls.

Photo (c) The National Portrait Gallery, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an enthusiastic traveller, fascinated by the natural world wherever he happened to be – Wales, the Lake District, Scotland, Europe. Unfortunately, he never visited Ireland and one can only regret that he did not furnish himself with subjects from our own wonderful landscapes. There does exist a watercolour of Clontarf Castle (not in the exhibition) which was probably worked up from someone else’s sketch and is evidence of Turner’s skill at working from a previous drawing, an expertise he refined over the years and which allowed him to capture a scene in situ in a sketch book for later development. In an age before photography and smart phones this method of working was a valuable skill and one used by many a predecessor. The Gallery holds a rich collection of his outlines and drawings and they provide a fascinating insight into his ways of working.

This Turner collection arrived in Dublin by way of bequests from a number of English well-to-do collectors, among them Henry Vaughan (1809-99) who inherited a large fortune from his father, a successful Southwark hat manufacturer. British museums and galleries acquired most of his collection, but he left 31 watercolours to the National Gallery of Ireland, stipulating that they ‘be exhibited to the public all at one time during the month of January in every year’ and that they should otherwise be kept in the specially-built cabinet which he provided. There followed many other contributors of prints and watercolours, such as those from the print dealer and art collector William Smith (1888-76) who gave over 50 works to the Gallery in 1872.

Mere descriptions of the works on display do them little justice. Nevertheless, one can single out a few that are personal favourites, if only for the pleasure of writing about them and drawing attention to them, and even these ‘favourites’ are constantly displaced on successive viewings. This continual process of ‘displacement’ attests to the imperceptible changes which occur in one’s own psyche over the years. Pictures that seemed most striking at one time give way to others as the course of life brings new concerns, attitudes and insights. As is the case with all great artists, Turner’s works keep up with us and our changes, and always seem enough ahead of us to satisfy the same, but different, individual who walks into the Gallery’s print room every new January, having experienced one more year of excursions and alarms (and, hopefully, some happinesses!).

Fishing Boats at Folkstone Beach, Kent
Photo (c) National Gallery of Ireland

People and their occupations were always part of Turner’s artistic concerns. ‘Fishing Boats at Folkstone Beach, Kent’ (c. 1826-27) exhibits all his professionalism as a keen observer of workers and their working days. Developed from a previous sketch, it shows figures engrossed in gathering fish and cleaning nets. The delicacy of his treatment of the people and the landscape is at one with the tranquillity of the scene, while never downplaying the arduous nature of their labour.

Clovelly Bay, North Devon
Photo (c) National Gallery of Ireland

‘Clovelly Bay, North Devon’ (c.1822) is another watercolour which captures a similarly quiet mood. Again, although the coastal backdrop of rock and sea and cloud takes up most of this watercolour – and is a harbinger of the great sky canvases to come later in his life – it is the daily life of the people and their work at this quarry that takes our interest. And their animals too: see those donkeys waiting patiently while being loaded.

The Great Fall of the Reichenbach
Photo (c) National Gallery of Ireland

In contrast is the detailed wash ‘The Great Fall of the Reichenbach’ from his first visit to mainland Europe in 1802. There are no figures here and if we are to speak of delicacy, we are speaking of technique rather than subject matter. Here is raw power, majestic and – subliminally – threatening. One can almost hear the roar of the deluge as it plunges down the mountain slopes, recalling something of the vision of his almost exact contemporary, the poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who often wrote of the threat hidden in the beauty of nature (‘the ghostly language of the ancient earth’). It really is a fascinating work and forms the basis for the finished watercolour, now in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford (UK).

It is for this depiction of raw natural power and our relation to it that Turner is perhaps most famous. In our National Gallery we do not have paintings like ‘The Battle of Trafalgar’ (Greenwich Museum) or his wonderful ‘Calais Pier’ (National Gallery, London), with their extraordinary convulsions of earth and sky and water. However, in the Dublin collection we do have the seedbed of these great works. ‘A Ship against the Mew Stone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound’ (c.1814), (see above at the head of this post) foreshadows magnificent works such as ‘Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth’, painted some 28 years later, and now in London’s Tate Gallery. All the power and cataclysmic force of the natural world depicted in these great later canvases are present in Dublin’s ’Mew Stone’ picture. Such waves! Such louring clouds! And a ship that must look quite sturdy when viewed in dock or on calm seas, but when caught up in the merciless force of nature … such fragility! Again, the extraordinary brushwork and the grey-blue vault of the warring skies can even trick us into imagining that we can actually hear the noise of the storm.

Sunset over Petworth Park
Photo (c) National Gallery of Ireland

On viewing these sketches and watercolours, many of them depicting high drama or pervaded by an atmospheric mistiness, it is always a surprise to come upon a watercolour like ‘Sunset over Petworth Park’ (c.1828). This work is one of a number executed at the invitation of a wealthy friend who allowed Turner to set up a studio in his country home. The artist’s interest here is to make a record for future working and there is no inclusion of people or animals. The result is an unrestrained concentration on the setting sun and the riot of colour it creates in the clouds above. It is a wonderful piece on its own account but is also one that looks ahead to the later Turner and the extraordinary works he was to execute, works in which it was the natural forces that surround mankind, rather than man himself, that would fascinate him.

Many of the later works were not received well at the time of their creation and there was even a rumour that the aging artist must have been slipping into some kind of mental instability. His extraordinary ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway’ (1840: Tate Gallery, London) remained unsold during his lifetime. Rather like Wordsworth with his revolutionary ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (published with Coleridge in 1798), Turner was an innovator who broke with prevailing practices. He was ahead of his time, as all great artists are.

The fact that he derived much of his technique from his watercolour practice also did him no favours with his contemporaries. There was the view that watercolours were all very well in their own charming way but were essentially inferior to oils. In his later work Turner, the consummate watercolourist, is often clearly discernible behind Turner the oil-painter. Techniques he developed in wash he was to put to good use in oils, so much so that some of his later paintings were described in his lifetime as incomprehensible.

There is no doubt but that in many of the pictures on display the artist is laying the groundwork for the bigger, more developed canvases of later. For instance, the ‘Sketch by Turner’, which arrived in the Gallery in 1904, is an early drawing that would later become his much more detailed watercolour of the picturesque German town of Bacharach (c.1841-45), a work now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Similarly, his depictions of Venice look forward to later great works.

However, in maintaining that these pictures are ‘forerunners’ of his more developed works and that they are mere early indications of his genius, it should not be thought that they are in any way the lesser on that account. They are, all of them, works of art in their own right – and not just because they are by Turner, although this is always a consideration: there is often a glimmer of an artist’s genius in the most seemingly trivial piece from his or her hand. (There is the story that Picasso once employed a workman to do some renovations on his house and, in order to help him, quickly made out some rough sketches of what he wanted done. When the work was finished, Picasso asked how much he had to pay. The workman is reported to have told him that he did not want any payment as long as he could keep the sketches.)

This collection is a wonderful resource for any young and aspiring artists, and for those of us who are no longer young and whose aspirations are by now become … aspirational! It is a yearly reminder of a great artist’s achievements, even before he had risen to his subsequent greatness. And if you missed this year’s exhibition, you should now immediately put it in your diary for January next.

Eamonn Lynskey

Revised version of an essay first published in ‘Senior Times’ magazine, January 2020

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The Nathaniel Hones, the Caryatids and the Elgin Marbles

Nathaniel Hone’s Caryatids (detail)

During the Good Old Days before Covid19 put a halt to our gallops I attended an exhibition of Nathaniel Hone’s paintings at our National Gallery of Ireland. Nathaniel (1831-1917) was a scion of that Hone family that includes his great grand uncle, the painter, Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1718-1784), and the painter and stained-glass artist Evie Hone (1894-1955). Among the younger Nathaniel’s paintings on show, all of them very engaging, one in particular caught my attention: a Greek landscape featuring the famous Erechtheion with its six female figures (the ‘caryatids’) supporting its entablature overhead.

The artist does a fine job in showing the monument in all its ruined beauty. It is indeed a wonderful artifact and makes a compelling subject for any artist, and especially one as accomplished as Hone in conjuring up the beauty of classical Greece.  But it was the gallery note beside the picture that arrested my attention almost as much as the painting. It informed me that although Hone had painted six figures, only five were in situ by the time he arrived in Greece. One can only assume that, as an artist, his sensibilities would not allow him to break the symmetry of the classical design and so perhaps that was the reason why he performed this sleight of brush.

Lord Elgin (1766 – 1841)

But what happened to the missing caryatid? Subsequent excursions on Wikipedia (long may its name be praised!) told me that she had ended up as an ornament in the garden of the Scottish Lord Elgin, having been ‘appropriated’ by him in 1801, the year that he had his men hack off half the frieze from the nearby Parthenon.  He claimed he had received permission but that is seriously in doubt. Subsequently he sold the pieces to Great Britain and they were deposited in the British Museum where they have been on show ever since as ‘The Elgin Marbles’.

The ‘Elgin’ Marbles in the British Museum

It is argued that Elgin did us all a favour in removing these ancient artifacts, thereby saving them from the ravages of erosion. Certainly it is true that they had suffered from the weathering of 2500 years. There is also the sad fact that some stonework from the Parthenon and the monument complex around it had been carted away as building material over the long years. The site was indeed in an increasingly perilous physical condition by 1801. However, since Greece has now the ways and means of overcoming these difficulties there should be no refusal to its request (made many times) that these important cultural artefacts be returned to where they belong. Furthermore, the contention that Elgin was primarily concerned about the physical state of these architectural treasures wears thin when we consider that he attempted to remove a second caryatid and, when technical difficulties arose, tried to saw it in pieces. The statue was smashed in the process and its fragments scattered. It was later restored by the Greek authorities.

Elgin’s dreadful act remains one of the most iconic examples of imperial rapaciousness, but is only one in a sad litany. I was stunned when I saw the great ornamental urns in Beijing’s Forbidden City still bearing the marks left by British occupying forces after they had scraped off the gold coating. In fairness, I should add that the British were not alone in having engaged in ‘cultural vandalism’. Think of the depredations inflicted on the Inca temples by the Spanish. And as for the argument that ‘those times were different times, with different attitudes …’ – that ‘excuse’ does not lessen the horror.

But back to Nathaniel Hone. He was a member of a prominent Anglo-Irish family that arrived in Ireland with Cromwell and which over the centuries produced men and women gifted in several walks of life, including the production of fine artwork. But it was Nathaniel’s ancestor, Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1718-84), that came into my mind while I was viewing the caryatid painting. I hurried down to the Irish Rooms to view again his large canvas, ‘The Conjuror’, which he painted in London in 1775, during a period of intense rivalries in the art world (when was there ever a period without?).

The Conjurer, by Nathaniel Hone the Elder (detail)

‘The Conjuror’ depicts a figure resembling Sir Josuah Reynolds (1723-1792), the famous English portraitist, whom Nathaniel the Elder represents as pointing to prints resembling works by Michelangelo and other famous artists. It is a satirical picture and clearly implies that Reynolds was engaging in plagiarism, as its title suggests. It was a canvas that involved Hone the Elder in a good deal of controversy at the time, not least because by other careful inclusions he managed to cast aspersions on other aspects of Reynolds’ character.

It is obvious that the elder Nathanial was more than miffed at such apparent ‘borrowings’ from the works of others and wanted to make a point about people who might be stealing other people’s work. No doubt the younger Hone shared the strong disapproval of his ancestor in this matter, as would most artists. Perhaps he also may have felt instinctively that he should repair the damage done to the classical Greek monument by restoring the stolen caryatid, thereby rescuing something of its former splendour? An idle conjecture on my part I know, but one which I like to believe. It certainly presents a more pleasing picture than the thought of the Lord Elgin attempting to saw a second caryatid into sections for transport home to sell to the British Museum.

Eamonn Lynskey

Published in Senior Times magazine September 2020

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This month’s Senior Times (Sept./Oc.t 2019) includes an essay from me on the subject of John Henry Cardinal Newman, which senior readers will remember from their Leaving Certificate days (back in the mists of time) as the author of essays such as ‘The Idea of a University’ which they studied diligently for their exam. Stirring stuff indeed, but an interesting man whose views on education I have increasingly identified with over the years. Next month (October) he will be canonised by the Roman Catholic Church.

Available from Easons and other newsagents