Famed Irish artist to donate painting to McGahern Museum in County Roscommon
The painting will be presented to the John McGahern Barracks Museum. Pictured is the late writer John McGahern.
Renowned Irish artist Robert Ballagh is presenting one of his most well-known works to the John McGahern Barracks Museum in Cootehall this evening, Saturday.
Credited with introducing Pop Art to Ireland, Ballagh’s works have been exhibited all over the world.
Born in Dublin in 1943, the artist began painting in 1967 and his milieu encompasses set design, the final series of Irish Punt banknotes, commemorative stamps and portraits of Irish literary, historical and establishment figures.
A series of pictures of people, life-size, looking at paintings gained him international recognition. He is best known for his autobiographical images of himself, his family, his house and street.
The painting, which will be presented to the John McGahern Barracks Museum this evening, Saturday, August 30th at 7 p.m., is his tribute to the novelist John McGahern.
The painting focuses on the former Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid (1895-1973). It is widely known that McQuaid coveted “the red hat” but never was made a cardinal. Robert Ballagh is ironically referencing this in the painting of McQuaid in a cardinal’s red robe. Since he had never seen a cardinal, Ballagh said, he used the Philippe De Champaigne painting of Cardinal De Richelieu in the Louvre as inspiration.
The portrait depicts a Magdalene Laundry on McQuaid’s left, with a mother and baby home on the right. The books in the foreground reference the banning of books, including a novel by John McGahern, by Ireland’s Censorship of Publications Board in 1965.
In an interview discussing the painting, Ballagh recounted that John McGahern’s 1965 novel, ‘The Dark’, features a young man who has experienced sexual abuse as a child. The book was quickly banned and McGahern lost his teaching job in Dublin due to the influence of McQuaid.
The treatment of McGahern, in addition to campaigns against book banning by authors like Edna O’Brien and Frank O’Connor, were factors in the changing climate of opinion that led to the next Censorship of Publications Act (1967).
Following the presentation of the painting, he and his friends will be given a guided tour of the Barracks Museum.
