Tomorrow the birthplace of Picasso will honour an Irish artist. A new roundabout in Malaga on the road to the former fishing village of Petregalejo, now a fashionable seaside suburb, will be ceremoniously named "Glorieta Jorge Campbell".
The painter George Campbell, born in Arklow and reared in Belfast, lived and worked for many winters in Petregalejo and the city council of Malaga has resolved to commemorate his life and work in the area.
As far as I am aware, Campbell, who died in 1979, is the first Irish artist to have an actual physical location named after him anywhere in the world. He joins the ranks of the leaders of the Wild Geese and other Irish soldiers of fortune whose names adorn the streets of several European and South American capitals.
It is hardly necessary to state that his native country has accorded him no such tribute. As St Matthew proclaimed, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house. (Campbell would wryly remark that a painter is always without profit in his own country.) Ireland has a disgraceful record in recognising its artistic sons and daughters even though many of them have achieved lasting and universal acclaim.
Patriots, priests and politicians, ancient and modern, are commemorated in every town and city of the land. From O'Connell Street in Dublin to the Jack Lynch Tunnel in Cork, from Wolfe Tone Street in Sligo to Castlereagh Road in Belfast, from Fr Griffen Road in Galway to Queen Elizabeth Road in Enniskillen the names roll on for mile after tedious mile.
But where are the nameplates for James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver Goldsmith, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Bram Stoker, Seamus Heaney, Kate O'Brien, Louis le Brocquy, Gerard Dillon, Evie Hone, William Wallace, Sean O'Riada? A 10-year-old could draw up the list and still not exhaust the core. With a few exceptions their names do not glitter like diamonds on the street corners of the land of saints and scholars. The saints, as usual, have snaffled all the best places but if belated action is taken there is still plenty of room for the scholars.
Recognition comes dropping slow. One of the new pedestrian bridges across the Liffey in Dublin has been named after Sean O'Casey. In the North there is the Bronte Way in Co Down to mark the association of the novelist sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Ann, with the area; their father Patrick Bronte (known locally as Prunty) was born and brought up near Loughbrickland.
If local authorities are blind to the tourist interest in our cultural heritage, some of those who depend for a living from visitors are not. A growing number of pubs and restaurants have had the commercial acumen to use the names of our distinguished artists on their premises. Their mercenary eye is not shared by the affluent developers of the swamp of new housing estates, apartments and office blocks. They obviously seek their inspiration for placenames among the misty reaches of the Cotswolds and the Chilterns.
What a confection of titles they have added to the street maps of our nouveau riche Republic: Sunnymede Downs, Hollybrook Glades, Green Gables, Hillside Close, Lakeside Reach, Oakdene Coppice, Sunrise End - abomination after abomination in the foothills of our mountains and the valleys of our rivers.
Commerce may be forgiven but our cultural institutions, shamefully, have not been in the vanguard of promoting cultural heritage. In our capital city we have the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, the Municipal Art Gallery - not one of them carrying the name of a painter or sculptor. There is no such reticence on mainland Europe. Amsterdam has its Van Gogh Museum and Rembrandthuis, Haarlem its Frans Hals Museum. In the beautiful Parque del Retiro in Madrid there is the exquisite Palacio de Velazquez. Barcelona has its Parc Joan Miro. Paris has a multitude of galleries named after artists, some of whom have long been forgotten: Musée Delacroix, Musée-Jardin Paul Landowski, Atelier Brancusi, Musée National Jean-Jacques Henner and so on to Musée Rodin and Musée National Picasso. The list is endless.
Some years ago there was no hesitation in re-naming our major railway stations after the men of the 1916 Rising. It did not require a referendum or even public consultation. In this, the centenary year of Samuel Beckett's birth, there is an opportunity for our lords and masters to turn from blood sacrifice to creative genius. They could start with the stations again. For the first time since 1890 a new railway station is to be built in Dublin, along the banks of the Liffey at Spencer Dock. The name already being mooted is Docklands; it could as well be in London or Liverpool. Why not Beckett or Behan or Joyce? They all knew the river well.
Tomorrow the city of Picasso will happily honour not one of its own but one of our own. George Campbell's long attachment to Spain was first formally recognised by the Spanish government in 1978 when he was made a Commander of the Order of Merito Civile. Approaches had been made to him some years previously but he politely declined, telling close friends he would not be happy accepting an honour from Franco's government.
He died suddenly at his home in Dublin at the age of 62, still in his artistic prime. He is buried at Laragh in his native Wicklow. His widow, Madge, now lives in Belfast and, unfortunately, is too frail to travel to Malaga to attend the official unveiling of Glorieta Jorge Campbell.