OnTheTown: The artist and the sitter, gazing at the canvas, agreed they were happy with the outcome. Bestselling author Maeve Binchy, the subject, and Maeve McCarthy, the artist, smiled shyly at the large assembly of friends who gathered in the National Gallery of Ireland for the unveiling of the latest addition to the Irish Life & Permanent Portrait series. The pair, posing for photographers, explained how they got to know each other and became friends over the months it took to complete the work.
When McCarthy took a break from painting, "she made me cups of tea. I missed her when she was gone", said the novelist, who is "just recovering", she said, from the premiere of Tara Road, the film based on her book of the same name.
"She's very lively and talkative. I did it [the painting] in her house in Dalkey in her attic work studio. I learned a lot about her and vice versa," said the artist. The most challenging and important feature she wanted to capture in the painting was Maeve's smiling eyes, she explained. She painted her sitting facing outwards, looking directly at the viewer "because she's so front-facing herself. She's quite an upfront personality", she said.
Writer Gordon Snell, Maeve Binchy's husband, also features in the painting, sitting reading a newspaper in one corner of the canvas. And the couple's cats are in there too.
Former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald, Dr Abdul Bulbulia, president of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust and his wife, Katharine, and the artist's husband, writer Kevin Kiely, were among those who came to the unveiling in Dublin on Monday night. Also present was film producer Noel Pearson, who says a film based on Binchy's latest story, The Hard Core, will start shooting in February or March of next year. It is "about three bad-tempered old birds and one bad-tempered old man", according to the writer.
The power of painting
Artists congregated in the Irish Museum of Modern Art this week to celebrate the work of the late Tony O'Malley.
Louis Le Brocquy, Anne Madden, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Cecily Brennan, Hughie O'Donoghue, Gerard Mannix Flynn, Robert Ballagh and Donald Teskey were among the artists who attended.
"I knew him well. I loved him," said Le Brocquy, recalling his painter friend, O'Malley, who died in 2003.
Poet John F Deane said he especially loved O'Malley's series of Good Friday paintings. "He painted one every Good Friday. They merge from very dark colours into bright colours, as if he was coming to terms with pain and suffering himself."
The artist's widow, Jane O'Malley, said it was "very nice to see the Bahamian canvases, which I haven't seen for quite a long time because most of the paintings come from private collections" .
Also, she singled out one of O'Malley's last paintings, Spring - Pond and Sky, "which is very special to me because I saw him painting it out of doors in his mid-80s on the largest canvas he ever worked on".
Among those at the opening were Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and wife Marie; writer and critic Brian Fallon, who had a long friendship with O'Malley, and art collectors George and Maura McClelland.
Eoin McGonigal SC, chairman of the Imma board, recalled "the unique nature" of O'Malley's art and "the powerful emotional force behind it, also his amazing personal warmth and how he instantly won the respect - and love - of all who met him".
O'Malley's cousin, Gráinne O'Malley, who was there with her friend Bríd O'Siadhail, remembered how the Kilkenny-born artist could inspire individuals.
Tony O'Malley runs at Imma in Dublin until Jan 1.
Meeting the long, tall man
Some of the many guests at the opening of Drama at Inish in the Abbey this week fondly recalled Cork-born playwright Lennox Robinson, who wrote 27 plays and died in 1958.
"He was a great old friend of mine. He was very witty, very drole, rather eccentric and very tall and thin," said Tomás Mac Anna, former artistic director of the Abbey.
Playwright Bernard Farrell, who is off to California shortly for the opening of his play, Many Happy Returns, said he saw Robinson once out walking in Monkstown. He said he was "this long, tall man with a very small dog".
Musician Florence Ryan, with her son, Abbey board member Eugene Downes, also remembered seeing Robinson once or twice in Dublin city centre. "You couldn't mistake him, he was so distinctive," she said. "He was like a seven foot tall man with red spots on his cheeks."
Writer Christopher Fitz-Simon said Robinson "was very aloof and strange but he wasn't false". Drama at Inish "is a timeless comedy", he added. "It's about pretension and people imagining what they are not."
Among those at the opening of the play on Wednesday were Senator Mary O'Rourke as well as Gate Theatre director Michael Colgan and his partner, Noelle McCarthy. Former general secretary of Siptu Donal Nevin, whose book James Connolly: a Full Life has just been published by Gill and Macmillan, was there with daughter Anne Nevin, while actor Máire Ní Ghráinne and artistic director of Tallaght's Civic Theatre Bríd Dukes also attended.
Dr Tony Roche, of UCD's school of English and drama, said, "It's a comedy with a serious purpose . . . It has a great line that 'the stone was lifted up and all the creepy crawly things came out'. Given the events of the week, it's still a very pertinent observation."
Drama at Inish by Lennox Robinson is at the Abbey theatre until Sat, Dec 31
Ode to the ancient mariners
The ancient marriage of the Nordic and the Celtic worlds was celebrated in the National Library of Ireland this week. Impressions of Ireland, by Icelandic scholar Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, who died in 1984, is a book, which commemorates the early pioneering monks of Teelin, Co Donegal, who travelled to Iceland in the 5th century. The book is in three sections in English, Icelandic and Irish.
"This book takes a bold plunge into the realms where fable and tradition meet and make a story," said Magnus Magnusson. The former Mastermind presenter and author is one of the contributors to the book, which is edited and published by Éanna Ó Cuinneagáin of Four Masters Press.
"Our early Irish saints were sea-faring hermits who sailed along the Irish, Scottish and Icelandic coasts in search of solitude," said the publisher.
They reached Iceland and America 1,000 years before Columbus, said Ó Cuinneagáin, who owns Cathach Books in Dublin.
"It was not the Vikings who went first, it was the Irish who went first," explained John Gore-Grimes, the Icelandic consul general to Ireland. This much-debated view is the case that Sveinsson puts, he said.
Dinny McGinley TD believes the monks of Teelin made it to Iceland before the Vikings, because nothing has ever come out of Teelin that was not true, he said with a twinkle in his eye: "Creidim gach uile fhocail de mar níor tháinig aon scéal as Teileann riamh nach raibh ina fhírinne!"
A bronze sculpture commemorating the voyages of the Teelin monks from Ireland to Iceland will be unveiled today at Teelin pier by Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan, who also attended the book launch.
"I hope this little book and our monument at Teelin pier will go some way to commemorate these early, pioneering mariners," said Ó Cuinneagáin, a native of the area.
Impressions of Ireland by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson is published by Four Masters Press