RHA exhibition to include Nell McCafferty portrait

THE ROYAL Hibernian Academy will exhibit a nude portrait of the writer and campaigner Nell McCafferty as part of its 178th annual exhibition which begins on Tuesday.

The portrait features in the catalogue for the exhibition which was published this week.

McCafferty (64) agreed to pose last year for the artist Daniel Mark Duffy, a well-known American portrait painter and professor of art at Paier College in Connecticut.

She said she was delighted with the results, which will feature in the exhibition.

"I thought it was absolutely lovely. For some people the dream lives on - for me, the illusion lives on. I think I'm gorgeous. There is a delusion among the young that your body matters.

"Most young people are shy about their bodies. It is harder for a young person, male or female. When you get to my age, you realise you're not in the market any more."

She said she was sceptical when he first wrote to her suggesting that she pose.

"I got a letter from him full of pious platitudes about the beauty of the older woman's body and I wrote back and said, 'Enough of your platitudes, I don't deal with platitudes.'"

She eventually posed for him one morning in her bedroom last year, just as she was getting up.

"He was persuasive. I did it for him because I like him so much, he's my kind of guy," she said.

"I like the idea of a tribe of women elders doing it. We're not calendar girls, there's no coyness about it. We're naked as nature intended."

Prof Duffy says he has managed to persuade other Irish women, all over the age of 40, to pose naked for him - mostly singers, actresses and artists - including a woman who is 95.

He hopes to exhibit the paintings next year and also collate them into a book.

Prof Duffy, who has Irish citizenship, said he chose older women so as to challenge the Greek and Roman notion of the idealised form still dominant in most nude portraiture.

"Older models were much more interesting to work with and have much longer and grander stories to tell. I want to challenge the idea that the human body after a certain period is something that should be dismissed or dreaded.

"I have worked with some younger women, but I find the way that our bodies evolve is really much more interesting for me. It is something that I have really wanted to celebrate and create these iconic images."

Among those who also agreed to pose naked for him was writer and herbalist Judith Hoad (71), who is based in Co Donegal.

She said: "My daughter sent me a birthday card last month and it said that I should never give up the right to be eccentric. That just about describes it. I may not be in the first flush of youth, but I think I'm fabulous."

The singer Honor Heffernan said she declined to pose nude.

"For me there has to be a point. I didn't feel it like it was something should be doing for the sake of doing it, but I'm amazed and I say fair play to the women who do it."

The RHA originated in the 1700s, when artists from the Society of Artists in Ireland petitioned the then Viceroy, Earl Talbot, for the opportunity to exhibit their works annually. Today, the academy supports contemporary art and artists in Ireland through exhibition, education and advocacy.

The academy is funded by the Arts Council through revenue earned from its annual exhibition and by benefactors, patrons and friends.