Dorothy Walker, who has died aged 73, made a major contribution to the visual arts in Ireland, both as an art historian and as a critic. She was a forceful and influential advocate of contemporary art and was active in the evolution of the Rosc exhibitions and in the development of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).
But not everyone in the art world was persuaded by the force of her arguments. Many artists, and not only the academicians, felt that she could not see beyond abstract modernism.
She was born on January 16th, 1929, the daughter of Walter and Moira Cole.
Her father was in the fruit and vegetable business, and the family lived in Mountjoy Square, Dublin. She was educated at the Dominican Convent, Wicklow, and at the École du Louvre, Paris, where she studied art history.
When a lack of funds forced her to abandon her studies, she remained in Paris, working for the Sunday cultural section of the New York Times. On her return to Ireland, she worked for Michael Scott and Partners, the architectural practice credited with bringing to Ireland a modern style of international repute. It was there that she met her husband, Robin Walker, whom she married in 1961.
She later worked for Signa, a multi-discipline design company that combined the talents of Michael Scott and Louis le Brocquy.
Turning to art criticism, she took note of Kenneth Tynan's dictum that the function of the critic was to bring back an account of the experience of art. As a freelance art critic she contributed to RTÉ from 1964 to 1967. For over a decade, from 1967 to 1977, she was art critic for Hibernia.
A contributing editor to Studio International, she wrote for many Irish and international art publications, and her essays were widely translated. She was an occasional contributor to the Sunday Times when publication of its Irish edition commenced.
She was president of the Irish section of the International Association of Art Critics and served as vice-president of the world body from 1979 to 1981. She was in 1981 a founding member of the board of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Art at New York University.
She was a founding member of Rosc (the poetry of vision), which was the brainchild of Michael Scott and marked the internationalisation of the Irish art world. Rosc was, in her words, a "quadriennial Museum of Modern Art". The first international exhibition of modern painting and ancient Celtic art was held at the RDS and the National Museum of Ireland in 1967. The 50 modern artists selected included Karl Appel, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Indiana, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Barnett Newman, Serge Poliakoff, Antonio Tapies and Victor Vasarely.
Almost 100,000 people viewed the exhibition, which enabled the public to see some of the best contemporary art and to view Celtic art in a new light. One of the main effects of Rosc on Irish artists, according to Dorothy Walker, was to open their imaginations to their own possibilities. Many young people "realised for the first time that art was an imaginable career".
The second Rosc exhibition was held in 1971 and was, in the opinion of some critics, more avant-garde and a greater artistic success than the first. It included both painting and sculpture, and works by Eva Aeppli, Joseph Albers, Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg and Bridget Riley were among those shown. The modern exhibits were complemented by an exhibition of Viking Age art.
However, there were complaints that no Irish artists were included.
It was not until 1980 that there was a representation of Irish art in Rosc, although many in the visual arts community felt that it was far from definitive. At this point Dorothy Walker's active involvement ceased and she became a member of a largely symbolic Rosc council.
By 1988 Rosc had run its course and IMMA was on the horizon. Dorothy Walker was a founding board member of the museum, established in 1990, and acted as interim director on a voluntary basis prior to the appointment of Declan McGonagle. Her tireless promotion of its activities worldwide proved invaluable to IMMA in its crucial early years.
Michael Coleman, Michael Farrell, Michael Mulcahy and Patrick Scott were some of the artists she championed. However, Michael Farrell did not take kindly to any criticism of his work, and Dorothy Walker was "honoured" to have messages addressed to her on more than one of his paintings because he rejected her comments.
When she expressed disapproval of cutout forms he exhibited in Paris in 1973, his next exhibition included a painting with the stencilled message, "MAINTENANT MADAME D.W. VOUS POUVEZ LES COUPER VOUS MÊME" (Now Madame D.W. you can even cut them yourself). She duly walked into the Dawson Gallery with a large tailor's scissors to take up this invitation, but was persuaded to desist by the gallery owner, Leo Smith.
The artist for whom she had the highest regard was Sean Scully, "the most important Irish painter in the eighties or nineties, abstract or otherwise". Born in Dublin and reared in London, Sean Scully lives and works in New York. It was Dorothy Walker who rebuilt his relationship with Dublin.
In the 1980s Dorothy Walker was one of the judges for the Guinness Peat Awards for Emerging Young Artists. From 1997 to August of this year she was a member of the board of directors of the Gallery of Photography where, in June 2001, she curated an exhibition of work by Diana Michener.
Her publications include Louis le Brocquy (1981), Michael Scott 1905-1989 (1995) and Modern Art in Ireland (1997).
Her husband, Robin, predeceased her in 1991. She is survived by her sons, Simon, Michan, and Corban; daughters, Sarah and Ciannait; and sister, Pauline.
Dorothy Walker: born January 16th, 1929; died December 8th, 2002