An Irishman's Diary

THE NAME of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon is not exactly calculated to attract sympathy from a modern audience. Redolent of aristocratic excess, it appears – among other things – to have at least one too many Brabazons. And while not an aristocrat, its owner did indeed lead a privileged life. But there was simple logic to his exotic name, and it was an Irish logic at that.

Like an SBB of later vintage, HBB was – at least partly – a product of Connacht. He was born (190 years ago this week) as the slightly more prosaic Hercules Brabazon Sharpe: the Sharpe bit coming from his English father, on whose Surrey estate the boy grew up.

The middle name, however, was in honour of his mother: one of the Brabazons of Swinford, where her family had large estates. That was to remain sufficient tribute to his Mayo relatives until the fateful year of 1847, when he inherited the property of an Irish uncle, on condition that he adopt Brabazon as a surname too.

There was money on both sides of the family, in fact. But at that time, the twentysomething Hercules was in Rome studying art and music, in contravention of father’s ambitions, which involved the law. The old man had been tightening the boy’s allowance in an effort to reel him in. Then the Irish windfall landed, and Hercules was henceforth free to do what he wanted, a position further secured when, in time, he inherited the Surrey estate as well.

What he wanted to do, as he once declared, was to live “for art and for sunshine”. Mayo did not offer much of either. Instead, he travelled widely on the continent, and beyond it to Africa and India. Everywhere he went he painted: always watercolours, in the manner of his hero Turner. But being a gentleman artist, he never felt the need to exhibit.

He became known as “the grand amateur”, in the process gaining the admiration of many professionals. The most influential art critic of the era, John Ruskin, said that Brabazon was the only person since Turner at whose feet he was happy to “sit and worship and learn about colour”.

But HBB was into his eighth decade of life before another friend, the portraitist John Singer Sargent, finally prevailed upon him to stage a one-man show. Thus it was that, in his 70s, he became one of art’s hot properties. He was at the height of his new-found fame when he was included in a major London exhibition of Irish art, organised by Hugh Lane, 1904. And his success was undimmed when, two years later, he died.

THE SUBSEQUENTcollapse of his reputation arose in part from the sheer size of his output. As a prolific painter who had lived 85 years, he left an awful lot of pictures, something that, if not managed well, can undermine market value. In the circumstances, a good salesman would have limited the supply at any time. Whereas in 1926, when suffering financial difficulties, Brabazon's descendants released more than 3,000 of the paintings onto the market in two years.

It took half a century for HBB's reputation to recover. Not until the 1970s were there signs that he was at last coming back into fashion. In 1975, a canny Irish Timeswriter noted that Brabazon was one of the Victorian artists "to watch out for", his prices having recently multiplied – albeit from a very low base – by a factor of eight.

Among those who were buying them then, clearly, was an American named Al Weil. I read about Weil in the Financial Timesrecently, where he was quoted as saying that he had started acquiring Brabazons in the 1960s, just days after arriving in London.

The pictures could be bought then for as little as £10 each. And within a few months he owned a dozen.

Eventually Weil's collection expanded to more than 200, while his efforts to restore Brabazon's reputation also extended to writing about him. But the reason for the collector's interview in the FTwas that he had just donated 35 of the paintings, first for exhibition, and later for sale in aid of a cash-starved London theatre. Which is where a certain pleasing circularity enters the story.

The theatre in question is The Tricycle, located in that little piece of Ireland called Kilburn, or “County Kilburn”, as it’s sometimes known. I worked there briefly myself, back in the 1980s, and although there was a theory that it was predominantly a Kerry ghetto – “Mayo men in Camden Town/Kerry men in Kilburn” – I remember plenty of western accents there too.

Anyway, reflecting the population’s general origins, the Tricycle has championed a long line of Irish playwrights, from GB Shaw to Billy Roche, while being equally committed to the area’s other main ethnic grouping, West Indians. Furthermore, through its pioneering use of documentary drama, and with its edgy treatments of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and, most recently, the London riots, it has also become one of the most politically outspoken theatres in London.

Which may or may not have been a factor in the severe funding cut it recently suffered. In any case, it appears to have found a friend in Weil. And through him, it has also attracted the sponsorship of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, who is unwittingly returning a compliment: his lifelong commitment to art and sunshine having been part-funded by the people of Mayo.

www.tricycle.co.uk