ART & ARTISTS: Mainie Jellett

An abstract and figure painter, Mainie Jellett started to take watercolour lessons as a young girl, later working under Sarah Cecilia Harrison and May Manning. She entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1914 while William Orpen was teaching there. Three years later she went to study at the Westminster Art School in London with Walter Sickert. It was there that she met Evie Hone who became a life-long friend. In 1920 she won the Taylor Scholarship and this money allowed her to travel to Paris with Hone where they worked in André Lhote’s studio. Here they got their first taste of Cubism, however, after a while they both decided to move into the realm of pure abstract painting and transferred to work with Albert Gleizes. On her return to Ireland, Jellett continued to visit him during the summer for the next ten years. In Dublin she gave painting lessons from her home and began to exhibit her cubist paintings which received hostile criticism from George Russell.

During the 1920s she exhibited regularly at the Dublin Painter’s Gallery while also showing at several exhibitions in Paris. Her art developed a greater realism in the 1930s and also became more religious in subject matter. She exhibited at the RHA from 1930 to 1937 while at the same time contributing to the Watercolour Society of Ireland until 1943. She became a leader in the modern movement in Ireland and joined the avant-garde group of painters, the White Stag in 1940, regularly lecturing and exhibiting with them. She exhibited in the first ever Irish Exhibition of Living Art where she had been appointed chairman but was unable to attend as she fell ill and died a short time later. Her works are in all the major Irish collections.

This is part 2 of 4 parts on the works of Mainie Jellett:

1928 Composition
gouache 28.5 x 42 cm

1928 Homage to Fra Angelico
oil on copper

1929 Abstract Composition
gouache 43.7 x 18.5 cm

1929 Composition
gouache on paper 29.2 x 34.9 cm

1929 Death of Procris
oil on canvas 67.5 x 117.5 cm

1930 Abstract
Hemisphere Crawford Art Gallery, Cork

1930 Composition
gouache 23.5 x 19 cm

1930 Painting
oil on canvas 76.2 x 91.4 cm

1930 Virgin with Angels
gouache 43.2 x 33 cm

1930 Winsor and Newton advertisement
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork

1932 Abstract
gouache 66 x 51 cm

c1932-35 Composition
oil on canvas 91.1 x 71.1 cm
Ulster Museum, Belfast

1933 Abstract Composition
oil on canvas

1934 Abstract Composition
gouache 39 x 18.5 cm

1934 Abstract Composition
gouache 32 x 40 cm

1934 Wave
gouache 53.5 x 38 cm

1935 Abstract Composition
Crawford Art Gallery, Ireland

1935 Abstract Composition
oil on canvas 119.5 x 96.6 cm

1935 Composition
oil on canvas 91 x 71 cm

1936 Painting
oil on canvas 121 x 69 cm

1937 A Man
oil on canvas

1937 Flower Form
oil on panel

1937 Study for a Woman
gouache

1938 Achill Horses
oil on canvas 91.5 x 66 cm

1938 Painting
oil on canvas 76 x 64.6 cm
Ulster Museum, Belfast

c1938-39 Design for "The Roof Garden"
gouache 26.6 x 40.6 cm

The Roof Garden was a play written by Andrew Ganly. It was produced by Olive March at the Actors Studio Theatre, Hammersmith, London, on 21 January 1938. This design by Mainie Jellett was subsequently made for the author to help him to get a Dublin production of the play in 1938/39.

1939 Achill Horses II study
pencil and gouache 22.2 x 36.9 cm

1939 Achill Horses
oil on canvas 61 x 92 cm
National Galley of Ireland

1939 Spring Madonna
study gouache 40 x 20 cm

1940 Adam and Eve
gouache 24.5 x 12 cm