A great talent kept hidden too long

FOR A LONG TIME Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe Mackie was the forgotten woman of Irish art. Paddy Mackie knew his mother to be something of a "dare devil" – a glider pilot, a friend of the pioneering aviator Amy Johnston, a crack shot, a diver, an early skier, an angler who could sweetly cast a fly – but what he didn't know was that in the 1920s she was an artist of distinction who studied under William Orpen and other leading painters of that period, writes GERRY MORIARTYNorthern Editor

A trip to an apple loft at the family home at Ringdufferin in Co Down on the shores of Strangford Lough, where he uncovered a treasure trove of her work, radically altered his view of his mother. That was in 1983.

“There was this large pile of old framed canvasses covered in plaster. The mice and rats had been chewing at the bottoms of some of the frames. These had been lying for a number of years and then as I looked further, all started to be revealed,” he recalled.

That discovery resulted in Mackie and Belfast-based political journalist and commentator Eamonn Mallie, who is also an art collector and writer, putting together a beautiful coffee-table book of her work. Just published, it features more than 100 of her paintings and more than 30 drawings. There are oils and watercolours, strong portraits and nudes, landscapes, flowers, and crowd scenes. Clearly the most impressive are her canvasses from the 1920s, when she was young, single and finding her artistic direction.

Metcalfe Mackie’s privileged background is evident from her wide range of subjects which include a series of paintings from a visit to Morocco in 1923 and, the same year, paintings of a skiing trip to Switzerland. She was obviously a very athletic woman, as demonstrated by a photograph of her diving stylishly in front of a large crowd at Portrush in Co Antrim in 1920.

KATHLEEN ISABELLAMetcalfe was a product of Northern Ireland's unionist industrial aristocracy of the Metcalfes, Pringles and Mackies. Born in 1899, she was educated at Richmond Lodge in Belfast and at Alexandra College in Dublin, where she painted a number of posters as part of the 1914-18 British war effort. She met Sir John and Lady Lavery in 1920 while studying at the Belfast School of Art. She moved to London to the Royal Academy Schools, studying there until 1924 under William Orpen, WR Sickert, George Clausen and Sir Gerald Kelly.

It is clear from her letters home from London to her family that she had serious ambitions, but that changed when her first cousin, Jack Mackie, came courting her in earnest. They had known each other since childhood but it was in 1924 that he stepped up his quest. It was very much a case of how the other half lived. On one occasion he chartered a plane and pilot and flew Kathleen over London.

You can sense her excitement and exhilaration as she wrote in a letter of how the pilot, at her request, did the next best thing to looping the loop by “shooting up in the air, shutting off the engines and side slipping for about 50 feet before catching her up again . . . It was a great experience”.

Two years later Kathleen and Jack were married in Ballymagrane Presbyterian Church in Co Tyrone. She was 26, he 28: it was a turning point in her life when she abandoned the life of the dedicated artist to become a mother to three boys and support to her husband, although still engaging in highly accomplished “holiday painting”, as well as her adventurous exploits.

“In a sense, her artistic prowess was watered down somewhat because of the fact she got married, became a mother and because of the lifestyle of the Mackies,” says Mallie. This was when Belfast was still an industrial city and Harland and Wolff and Mackies were its engineering giants.

BASED ON THEflying experience, the couple started gliding in Northern Ireland, establishing the Ulster Gliding Club and establishing a friendship with Amy Johnston. Paddy recalls stories of her ditching at sea and crashing into haystacks and also making the pages of the Daily Mailafter a lucky escape in Yorkshire. The book features one striking painting of a yellow glider flying over Downhill at Magilligan Strand in Co Derry. She was spirited throughout her life, having her last flight when she was 78 and her husband 80.

MACKIE'S 1983 APPLEloft discovery led to her first one-woman show in 1985, when she was 86, at the Castle Espie Gallery in Co Down. Eleven years later, in her 97th year, a retrospective of her work was presented at the Ulster Museum. The exhibition delighted her, but she was too frail to attend. Her grandchildren videoed the opening so she could view it, and she died a couple of weeks later. Paddy's wife Julie reckons that apple loft discovery and the two exhibitions "made her last 10 years one big clap".

Mackie – who was kidnapped by the IRA in the early 1970s and "talked my way" out of the incarceration – is 78 now. He is absolutely thrilled with the book, simply titled Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe Mackie: a loving elderly son's tribute to his late mother. "It is lovely to do this and have a broader appreciation of her work and have her placed in the chronology of Irish art where I just feel she belongs," he says.

Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe Mackie, by Eamonn Mallie and Paddy Mackie, costs £50. Available in National Gallery; Ulster Museum; Castle Espie Gallery, Comber, Co Down; and James Wray Gallery, James Street South, Belfast