Patrick Hennessy and Gerard Dillon
Good news from Ireland. At last one can see what has every sign of being a proper retrospective of the peculiar work of Patrick Hennessy, opening shortly.Long the partner of Harry Robertson Craig, and friendly with Colquhoun and Macbryde, he worked in a super-realist style. I am not sure where such a style derived from, (Hennessy was Irish but went to art school in Dundee), although when one thinks of the work of Tristram Hillier, Edward McGuire or Algernon Newton, for example, it suggests these artists got their inspiration from somewhere not that obscure. Perhaps the show and its catalogue will elucidate that. It is always an important antidote to one of the mantras of art history to identify lines of 20th C artists who did not follow any of the occasionally false trails set by Picasso (Robert Colquhoun being a good contrast to his friend Hennessy in this regard, as he caught the Picasso bug quite badly). All credit to the lovely gallery at the Irish Museum of Modern Art ( IMMA) in Kilmainham for putting on a serious subject like this. I will have to sort out a visit and an excuse to revisit one of my favourite hotels, the Merrion.
Equally welcome is news of a Gerard Dillon show in Belfast at a gallery unknown to me in the Falls Road. This one I probably will not have time to visit but again it is good to see that it is on.