It is very decent of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris to lend us Edgar Degas's L'Absinthe, the Impressionist painting valued at about £33 million. In return, the Hugh Lane gallery, where L'Absinthe will be on view for the next few weeks, has lent Manet's portrait of Eva Gonzales for the same period.
Fair enough. Manet and Degas were good pals and both had the good sense to stand well back from the main Impressionist crowd and not get carried away, paying more heed to draughtsmanship and the structural principles of formal composition than the likes of Pissarro, Cezanne, Sisley and the rest of the crew.
As was reported in this paper recently, the Degas painting caused a huge row when first shown in Brighton. Absinthe, now regarded as poisonous, was a very popular drink among the Parisian working classes at the turn of the century, and L'Absinthe, featuring a depressed-looking couple staring at a glass of the stuff in a cafe, was seen as a commentary on the evils of alcohol.
The pair shown in the picture were not actually Parisian alcoholics but pals of Degas, Ellen Andree and Marcellin Desboutin. Being an artist, Desboutin didn't care a hoot about his less than flattering depiction, but Ellen, an actress and leading beauty of the day, wasn't too happy about her glum and down-at-heel appearance. Nor did she like having the single glass of absinthe placed in front of her rather than Desboutin.
L'Absinthe is a fine picture, but, of course, it isn't a patch on the lost masterpiece L'Guinness by the Irish Impressionist Pius Kelly. This great work, also featuring a depressed couple in a bar, caused similar outrage to that occasioned by L'Absinthe when it was first exhibited in Kelly's local parish hall in Toomevara, Co Tipperary, back in the 1880s.
L'Guinness was seen as a outrageously negative commentary on drink, and since Pius was known to be fond of a jar himself it didn't go down too well with the local public (or publicans). The whole affair caused great scandal at the time, though Kelly himself regarded it as a cause celebre. Barred from local inns for two weeks, he spent the fortnight drinking his way around New Inn, Cashel and Cahir, taking perverse delight in the bad publicity.
Kelly was friendly with another artist, Tommy Maher, a Mullinahone man who for reasons known only to himself specialised in vaguely elegiac paintings of letters and parcels. He was one of the early Post Impressionists. It was Maher who sat for L'Guinness along with Gearoidin O'Rahilly, a powerfully-built Toomevara girl who had just got the call to training in St Pat's in Drumcondra.
A moderately intelligent girl, Gearoidin had gone to the Ursuline Convent in Thurles, where she got an impressive five honours in the Leaving Cert. The good nuns were of course delighted that Gearoidin had got the call, and managed to hide their disappointment that she wasn't going into the novitiate. But they got an awful shock on seeing her, large as life, lowering a pint of porter with evident relish in L'Guinness.
As it turned out, Gearoidin developed a taste for the stuff after that, and over the next three years of training in St Patricks's she could be found most nights of the week in the Cat and Cage, and sometimes in the Brian Boru or even up in Beneavin House. When she got the NT after her name she went on to teach for many years in a small national school near Knockmore in Co Mayo, Currabaggan I think it was, and all her life she was pleased to be pointed out as Pius Kelly's model for L'Guinness.
Tommy Maher, however, was absolutely outraged at his depiction in the portrait, sipping a modest half-pint as if he were not a man at all. He never got over the shame of the powerful-looking Gearoidin sinking the full pint beside him and wiping her lips with obvious enjoyment. Maher and Kelly fell out shortly after that, and the picture itself disappeared around the same time that Monet's Impression: Sunrise (which of course gave the movement its name) was stolen in Paris. It would be worth a fair few bob now.
As for the oblique angle from which the L'Absinthe couple were observed by Degas, many people who saw L'Guinness years ago also commented on the peculiar angle at which Gearoidin and Tommy are observed. In fact they look like they are about to pitch forward on their faces.
This arose from the fact that Pius Kelly was known to paint "in a reclining position" as the renowned art historian Ernst Gombrich tells us. In other words he would lie sprawled on his back on the floor while the wife (Margaret Mary Alacoque) would hold the canvas above him hour after hour. It was a peculiar way of working, and no doubt restful for the artist, if not for poor Margaret, but sure someone has to suffer for art's sake.
bglacken@irish-times.ie
