Biography: One of the memorable aspects of growing up in an artistic household in the 1960s and 1970s was visiting other artistic households as children, many of them in the Dún Laoghaire area where we lived: the painter Charlie Brady, with his lights turned off (cutting costs, or aiming for a certain shade); another painter, Eddie McGuire, with his dead birds (pheasant, snipe); and Imogen Stuart, with her big religious carvings.
And, near to her, in Sandycove, the most memorable of all, Micheal Farrell: swarthy, loud and with a wild charm, and more like a rock'n'roll character than a painter.
It was great for kids - to visit. But maybe not to grow up with, and something that Charlie Brady said to me resonated as I read this absorbing and revealing account of Farrell's life, by his brother David.
"Always remember," said Brady, in that Brooklyn accent that seemed to get stronger the longer he was out of New York, "that for the artist - especially a visual artist - the art comes first, and the family second."
Whether true or not, and there are as many exceptions as there are examples of this maxim, the fact is that many artists choose it to be so. And Micheal Farrell certainly did. I knew he had a volatile marriage and difficult relations with his children, but I hadn't realised quite how reckless and "free-spirited" was his character.
It is a credit to David Farrell that he doesn't shirk from portraying this side of his brother's character, and indeed he often expresses exasperation with Micheal's meanderings, drinking and extramarital affairs. But he forgives him, as many did, for his immense charm, energy and talent. Nor does he shirk from describing their own problematic family background, especially life with their hectoring, hard-drinking mother. It was an unusual background: prosperous Catholics in rural Co Meath who fell on bad times but who still insisted on sending Micheal to Ampleforth and then to St Martin's Art School in London. Later, it even meant the parents working as servants in England, where they were recognised by diners, amazed at their fall from grace. "Jimmy, what are you doing here?" they asked. Interestingly, Jimmy, the father, had been a rugby international for Ireland.
But all this is personal history, fascinating as it is. What of the talent? Micheal Farrell was one of a number of artists who broke on to the scene in Ireland in the 1960s: rebellious, experimenting with form and colour, and showing no great reverence for the art establishment, although Micheal secretly craved their approval (don't they all?). Even within this generation, he is an unusual modernist, with his hard-edged abstraction and bright colours, and yet his work was influenced by very Irish imagery such as cairns and dry stone walls. When most Irish painters of the time went for a messy and fluid abstract expressionism (fed by all that rain and windy landscapes), Micheal was our Frank Stella, with his clean lines and cheeseboard shapes. Later, his works were influenced by political events, about which he held strong nationalist views. His Presse series, with its orange squashes and concentric slices, was inspired by the Civil Rights marches, and there were further, darker explorations after Bloody Sunday in 1972. His views could sometimes be simplistic, but there is a powerful poignancy to his A Shorter History of Ireland (1980) with its prone and naked body, and bloody paint splash.
Farrell had strong, but complicated, feelings about the relationship with England, not least because he spent so much time there. Probably his most famous painting is Madonna Irlanda, based on François Boucher's portrait of Miss Louisa O'Murphy, mistress of Louis XV, with the Irishwoman depicted lying on a divan with her backside exposed.
"I don't like Ireland being a whore, but that doesn't mean I don't like whores," said Farrell, a confused explanation that says a lot, not just about his political feelings (and about the painter/collector relationship?) but also about his obvious love/hate relationship with women, especially strong women. Like many 1960s rebels, he was much more sexist than he realised.
But this was all wrapped up in a forgivable mixture of machismo, charm and aching vulnerability, and, as kids, one only saw his Jaggeresque swagger and hilarious, biting wit. Flush with success, Farrell moved permanently to France in the 1970s, after which (to this viewer) his work became more patchy. This wasn't helped, of course, by his later long battle with cancer. This is a fine and absorbing account, which adds to the dearth of primary material on our visual art tradition.
Eamon Delaney is the editor of Magill magazine
Micheal Farrell: The Life and Work of an Irish Artist By David Farrell The Liffey Press, 200pp. €29.95