AS A rare exhibition of paintings depicting hurling goes on public display, leading art experts have expressed surprise that Gaelic games feature so rarely in art despite their central role in the national culture.
Marley Irish will open Aristo-Cats, her exhibition of 20 paintings featuring hurling images, in Kilkenny this evening.
Dr Brendan Rooney, of the National Gallery, said the GAA was “significant by its absence in art”.
He confirmed that there was no painting in the National Gallery’s collection devoted to hurling or football scenes.
In 2006, he curated a major exhibition at the National Gallery with over 80 paintings illustrating Irish social life over the past two centuries and had to borrow three paintings – from a very limited pool – to illustrate the GAA theme.
David Britton, a director with Adam’s fine art auctioneers on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, said “there ought to be a terrific market for paintings which depict the GAA given the nation’s fondness for rural and
traditional images in art but historically the games have never been depicted by the art establishment”.
He was puzzled by the dearth of hurling and football paintings given that “Irish genre pictures are perennially popular”.
Mr Britton could recall only one painting with a hurling theme having been sold at auction. Last year, a painting entitled All Ireland Hurling Final 1963, Waterford v Kilkennywas bought by a private collector from Cork for €12,000 at an Adam's sale. The artist was Thomas Ryan and the painting was consigned from the collection of Charles Haughey. Irish (44) describes herself as "a self-taught artist" who is "passionately interested" in Gaelic games.
She has no studio and often paints in “a very busy farmhouse kitchen”.
The exhibition, which runs until August 17th, will be opened tonight at the Hibernian Hotel by Kilkenny hurling great Eddie Keher.
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