‘Irish Art and Modernism 1880-1950’ by Dr S.B. Kennedy was published by the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens University Belfast in 1991. Hugely influenced by Kennedy’s PhD studies at Trinity College Dublin under the late pioneering art historian Anne Crookshank, the book won him the Sunday Independent/Irish Life Visual Arts Award in 1991, and is widely regarded as the definitive text for this period.
Brian Kennedy (S.B. for his published work, to avoid confusion with an artist, and a curator of that name) died three years ago, aged seventy-nine. Most of his working life before retirement was spent at the Ulster Museum, in the days when that institution had a serious regard for scholarship and for education.
I have, on several occasions, got into trouble for making trenchant comments on some well-known Irish art historians (thankfully the old breed are either dead or dying out), because of sloppiness of research, lack of footnotes, nepotism, or sheer laziness. One of my principal complaints, in earlier years, was that Irish art historians tended to view and evaluate Irish art only within the Irish art world which, of course, made it easy for them to make a case that so and so was a great artist when the only point of comparison was other Irish artists.
To me, that was a ridiculous proposition. As far as I was concerned, if you wanted to evaluate the worth of an Irish artist, then you had to measure him or her, first of all within the history of European art, and then within world art. After all, even in the pre-digital era, artists travelled, looked at art books, saw documentaries on television, and went to the movies.
(l-r) front cover, insert pages of Irish Art & Modernism; portrait of Dr SB Kennedy
So, the major service that S.B. delivered to Irish art history, in his book Irish Art & Modernism, was to chart the foreign influences on Irish artists, from the Impressionist period up until 1950. It is worth remembering that the leading figures of the Irish Literary Movement had been busily promoting an Irish nationalistic platform, and most Irish visual artists were in step with this and tended to be conservatively inclined. But there was a significant number who were progressively inclined and who looked to Europe especially for inspiration.
To overstate the case somewhat (but only somewhat), S.B’s book lifted Irish art history out of the provincial and the insular, and forced later historians to take account of the wider world. It is divided into three parts: a history of the period which takes up roughly half of the book, a colour-illustrated catalogue of 132 works with notes on each, and a series of appendices, including a bibliography and index.
Today, SB is best-known for his work on Paul Henry: he wrote a biography and then a catalogue raisonné of the artist, the latter of which I proofed for him. I remember once sitting in his study at Seaforde, County Down and, me being me, I was busily noting what he had on his bookshelves. I noticed an entire shelf of travel guides to the Republic of Ireland, many going back to the turn of the twentieth-century, and asked him what they were for. He explained that, going through the illustrations in these books, often allowed him to identify the location of a Paul Henry painting. A useful lesson.
(l-r) covers of Dr SB Kennedy's books on artists Paul Henry, TP Flanagan, and Great Irish Artists
S.B. authored many other books which I have on my shelves, biographies, and critical studies, of which the most important is his book on The White Stag group of artists. But he will be remembered most of all for bringing Irish art history into the real world.
Brian McAvera, March 2025
Thanks to the McAvera & Walker Library, we have copies of this and many other Adam’s catalogues in the NI Visual Art Research Library & Archive at the Golden Thread Gallery. NIVARLA will launch formally in the Spring, and items in the rare and special collection will be available to view by appointment. We will share more information on how to access and use NIVARLA soon!
The Northern Ireland Visual Art Research Library & Archive is supported by the Ampersand Foundation, with many books and archive items donated and on loan from the McAvera & Walker Library.
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