ARTLissadell opens this week minus one of its most notable features: an iconic painting of Constance and Eva Gore-Booth. It goes on display in Dublin today, courtesy of the Naughton family. Robert O'Byrne reports
This week, a painting that hung for 100 years in a private diningroom in the west of Ireland goes on display in a hotel in Dublin. The picture in question isn't necessarily a great work of art, but it's one that has always attracted an enormous amount of interest. The artist responsible doesn't usually command the highest prices, and yet, when this work came up at auction late last November, there was ferocious bidding before it eventually sold for €200,000, more than four times what had been expected.
The picture is Sarah Purser's portrait of two sisters, Constance (later Countess Markievicz) and Eva Gore-Booth, painted when they were young girls and showing them in the woodlands surrounding their family home, Lissadell, Co Sligo. Members of the landed gentry, both women became iconic figures of early 20th-century Ireland.
The two were remembered by the poet, W.B. Yeats, as "two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle." Their early beauty was forever captured in Purser's double portrait which, until last winter, hung above the fireplace of the diningroom in Lissadell. However, it now hangs in one of the drawing rooms of the Merrion Hotel, following the sale of Lissadell's contents.
"We decided to buy it because the picture is a one-off," explains Martin Naughton, chairman of Glen Dimplex who, with his wife Carmel, were the successful bidders that afternoon in November. "It's a piece of Irish history and we wanted to make sure it wouldn't leave the country." Actually, the picture did leave this country, temporarily, in order to be restored. Purser's painting now has a renewed lustre that had been dimmed by a century of accumulated grime from smoking fires.
"Quite a lot of work was needed to bring it back," Naughton confirms. "The restorers threw their hands into the air when they first saw it and said it had almost got to the point of no return." There's no evidence of that now, and the fulsome good looks of the Gore-Booth girls is, once more, apparent for everyone to see.
"We didn't buy this for ourselves," he says. "We saw the picture and said, yes, it should be saved for the State. We also felt it should be on public display and that the hotel was appropriate because of its location opposite Government Buildings." While the painting might not remain in its current location for the next 100 years, Naughton says it definitely won't be moved in the near future. It goes on display today and Carmel Naughton, former chairman of the National Gallery of Ireland, with her sister, Ita Kavanagh, has written a handsome book about the Gore-Booths, Yeats and Sarah Purser.
A number of other pictures belonging to the Naughtons can also be seen in the hotel. Most of the art on display in the hotel belongs to Glen Dimplex deputy chairman, Lochlann Quinn, but the Naughtons have made their own contribution. "Lochlann and I have slightly different interests," Naughton says. "He's very interested in Roderic O'Conor, but our main concern would be with the Irish Impressionists of the early 20th century - Lavery, Yeats and Orpen."
Martin Naughton remembers the first painting he bought, when he was living in Hampshire in the 1950s and feeling homesick for the Ireland he saw in Paul Henry posters at the local railway station. On a weekly salary of £4, he bought a Henry landscape from a gallery in London for £7. He still owns it.
"The only reason I've ever bought a painting is because I liked it, never as an investment. Follow your instincts, that's my advice, and you'll be happy to live with what you've got."
Naughton takes a pragmatic approach to the paintings he owns. "I'm very privileged," he comments. "Carmel and I own many wonderful pictures but they're only possessions. We understand that we're simply caretakers for the next generation and no more than that."
So do they still buy? "Oh, a collector's always a collector," he says. "Yes, we're still buying, although less than before. It has to be something that really grabs us."
And do he and his wife share the same taste? "Well, we try to agree on our paintings. I think our collection reflects our shared interests."
Certainly, they both fell for Purser's portrait of Constance and Eva Gore-Booth. "When we visited Lissadell," he says, "what touched us was all the coverage preserved about Constance's funeral, of the numbers of people who turned out to pay tribute to this great woman. That's why we wanted the picture to go on display. It's not a great work of art but it has extraordinary historical resonances. This is an iconic painting. We want as many people to see it as possible."
The portrait can be seen free of charge in the drawing room of the Merrion Hotel, Dublin 2, from today.