‘A strange and exotic presence in Irish art’, ‘standing alone’, ‘very un-Irish’, Patrick Hennessy RHA (1915-80), was one of Ireland’s most successful post –war realist painters, but one whose work puzzled the critics writing in Dublin in the 60s and 70s. A prolific artist, he created traditional portraits, landscapes, equine studies and still-lifes, but he also created works unlike anything being made in Ireland at the time. Fusing realism with a Surrealist subjectivity learned in Paris he painted human figures isolated in the landscape, male nudes and portraits of handsome African men that puzzled Irish critics who branded him ‘something of an outsider’.
The label ‘Surrealist’ was generally used to explain-away some of his images that were not easily read. In reality many of his works were comprised of visual codes that signified clear narratives of homosexual life. While these codes were impenetrable to some; they were readily interpreted by those around his circle that included artists like Francis Bacon, the Two Roberts (Colquhoun & MacBryde), John Craxton and Lucian Freud; as well as the writers Elizabeth Bowen, Cyril Connolly, Brendan Behan and others.
At a time when gay men were subject to social and legal persecution for the simple fact of their sexual orientation, Hennessy and his lifelong partner Henry Robertson-Craig bravely chose to exhibit works that clearly marked them as homosexual. They have almost no peers in Irish art, but Hennessy’s late work demonstrates an engagement with the emerging international queer-art movement of the 1970s. This exhibition re-examines and repositions Hennessey’s work as part of the IMMA Modern Irish Masters series, a strand of programming that looks at the post-war period to shed light on artists who have been critically neglected; but also to reflect on what their work might mean to audiences today.
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