Mystical style that kept Russell on the fringes

A regular name featured in Irish art auctions is that of George Russell, otherwise known as AE. But although work by this painter consistently comes up for sale, he remains something of a shadowy figure, and certainly much less subject to scrutiny than some of his contemporaries.

Among the wealth of Irish art included in next Tuesday's auction to be conducted by de Veres at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, there are two pictures by Russell. Two other Russell paintings were sold by Sotheby's last month, The Sirens and Two Ladies on the Strand, which made £13,800 and £4,830 respectively. This is something of a change from the situation which used to prevail. In an Oriel Gallery catalogue published 10 years ago, Oliver Nulty recalls that in the early 1950s one of Russell's paintings offered at an auction on Dublin's quays failed to find a buyer, "even when a coal-scuttle was added to the lot".

It remains true that the artist's quasi-mystical style is not to everyone's taste. Prof Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin in The Painters of Ire- land c.1660-1920 rather dismissively remark that "his work is purely decorative and extraordinarily repetitive". Paintings by Russell always possess a consistently winsome charm but perhaps they should be described as consistent in manner rather than repetitive. More importantly, they owe little to any other Irish artist, having more in common with late 19th-century French and Belgian Symbolists such as Gustave Moreau.

The explanation for this lies in Russell's abiding interest in spirituality, often of the most questionable kind. Born in Lurgan, Co Armagh in 1867, he moved to Dublin in his early teens and attended the Metropolitan School of Art, where W.B. Yeats was a fellow student. The two men became members of the Theosophical Society, the bizarre but enormously popular mystical organisation established by Madame Blavatsky.

In 1890, Russell took up residence in the society's Irish headquarters at 3 Upper Ely Place, where he painted a series of mural decorations which remain in situ. A year or two earlier, he had first begun to use the pseudonym AE by which he became known; this seems to have derived from the Greek word Aeon, a term used by the Gnostics and another reference to his interest in spirituality.

There was another, more practical side to Russell which found an outlet through his involvement with Sir Horace Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, which founded the co-operative movement in Ireland.

Because of their beards and interests in matters mystical, Russell and his circle were known as "the hairy fairies of Plunkett House." Between 1905 and 1923, he edited the society's journal, The Irish Homestead, and he also found time to write several volumes of poetry and a number of plays; Constance Markievicz performed the title role in his version of Deirdre in 1902. Because of his diverse interests, painting never received Russell's full-time attention, although he exhibited regularly in group shows until the 1920s. Much of his art was produced while on holiday in Donegal. Perhaps this explains why so many of his paintings feature bathing figures.

This is the case with the pictures being offered by de Veres next week, A Peaceful Bathe (Lot 15, estimate £6,000-£9,000) and Three Children on a Beach (Lot 48, £4,000-£6,000). As so often in a Russell work, the figures here have an ethereal quality and might just as well be unearthly spirits as human beings.

Since he frequently painted the former, this confusion is understandable. A Peaceful Bathe is also typical in its palette in which pale pastel tones and white predominate, although Russell sometimes went to the other extreme and produced pictures with a nocturnal setting. In The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland, Paul Larmour quotes Russell writing in 1901, "The Celtic Renaissance in Ireland . . . has come about . . . through the almost simultaneous awakening of a number of Irishmen to a higher ideal of beauty and perfection in their art than hitherto". In his own case, this ideal had a powerfully mystical element, which is invariably reflected in the paintings produced.