John Breakey, That Cold Crisp Day at the Beach by Christian Kunnert

THAT COLD CRISP DAY AT THE BEACH

PA I N T I N G S B Y J O H N B R E A K E Y

This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition

Photography: Bryan Rutledge Design: Kunnert + Tierney

That Crisp Cold Day at the Beach Paintings by John Breakey

at The Naughton Gallery, Queen’s University, Belfast 19 October - 28 November 2010 ISBN 978 0 853899 78 5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the permission of the artist, author, photographer and publisher.

The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s Lanyon Building Queen’s University Belfast BT7 1NN Telephone: +44 (0)28 9097 3580 Fax: +44 (0)28 9097 3401 Email: art@qub.ac.uk www.naughtongallery.org

THAT COLD CRISP DAY AT THE BEACH Written by S. B. Kennedy

To those familiar with the art scene in Belfast in the 1950s and early 1960s, John Breakey’s is a name to conjure with. At the age of eighteen, in 1950, he was elected a member of the Ulster Academy of Arts; two years later, in 1952, he showed a Self-Portrait at the Royal Ulster Academy’s annual exhibition in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery; in 1955, he had three landscapes at the Ulster Arts Club’s Spring exhibition at the CEMA Gallery in Belfast; in 1957 his Standing Stone — ‘he makes a striking comment on the fascinating associations which the erosion of rocks can create’, a premonition of work to come — caught the eye of the News-Letter’s art critic, Frederick Allen (18 November 1957), in his review of a show at Belfast’s Piccolo Gallery; and in 1963 he was included in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in Dublin along with such luminaries as Louis le Brocquy, Sam Francis, Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. Born in Belfast in 1932, Breakey first studied art under the well known Irish painter Charles Lamb (1893-1964) at Carraroe in County Galway. As a young man in the 1920s Lamb, who came from Portadown, had been a member of the Society of Dublin Painters, which Paul Henry, Jack B. Yeats and a few others had founded to forward the ideals of the modern movement in art in Ireland. Thus, unknowingly at the time, Breakey had tapped into a long and influential tradition in Irish painting. In time, like many of his contemporaries — the later Paul Henry, William Conor, Maurice MacGonigal, for instance — Lamb’s work grew more academic becoming typical of what Bruce Arnold has called the ‘school of Irish academic realism.’1 But for all that, Lamb imbued in Breakey a (then unfashionable) respect for the practical considerations of picture-making, such as the preparation of canvases, the layout of paints on his palette and so on. Moreover, Lamb had been one of the earliest painters to settle in the west of Ireland where he was captivated by the tranquillity of the area and, in a way this, expressed through a flattening of the picture-plane and an emphasis on the juxtaposition of shape and colour, became the real subject matter of his work, elements which, as we shall see, were to have much bearing on Breakey’s painting. In 1953 Breakey entered the Belfast College of Art to study painting and lithography. There his teachers included the influential painting and drawing masters, Newton Penpraze (1888-1978) – ‘a popular and inspiring teacher’, as John Hewitt

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commented,2 who placed much emphasis on good draughtsmanship — and Romeo Charles Toogood (1902-66). Toogood had an enormous influence on all his pupils, for it was as a teacher that he found his true vocation being, in Kenneth Jameson’s words, ‘that rara avis, the intuitive teacher.’3 The painter Tom Carr (1909-99) was another of Breakey’s teachers and, after a distinguished career at the Belfast College, in 1958 Carr helped him to gain admission to the Slade School of Fine Art at London University (Carr’s own alma mater), one of the most celebrated art schools in the country. At the Slade, where he remained until 1960, Breakey continued to study painting and lithography, his teachers now including Stanley Jones (b. 1933), who later managed the Curwen Studio which specialisied in fine art prints, and the Welshman Ceri Richards (1903-71), a painter and lithographer who had been much influenced by the celebrated German painter and printmaker, Max Ernst (1891-1976). Lucian Freud and Keith Vaughan were also lecturing at the Slade in his time there. For Breakey the experience of the Slade and living in London was ‘just wonderful’. In his own words, ‘Each day I would either draw or paint in the life room, work on the landing, painting my own ideas alongside other artists such as Anthony Green or work in the lithographic room where Stanley Jones would help greatly with the technical side of lithography.’ Ceri Richards helped with the aesthetic side of his art. ‘I got on very well with him,’ he recalled. Often on Sundays he and a fellow-student, John Salt — who later went to New York and became one of the Photo Realists — would go round the London galleries before going to the Royal College Common Room, where Salt knew some of the students. ‘It wasn’t until much later,’ he recorded, ‘that I realised that some of the students we had met had started the Pop Art movement, so I was privileged to see some of their very first pop art paintings.’4 Among these young artists was David Hockney. As a student in London Breakey exhibited relatively little, but in 1959 he showed a lithograph, Two Forms, with the avant-garde ‘Young Contemporaries’, a group comprised of students from the Slade, the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. The following year the Junior Common Room at Keble College, Oxford, purchased a lithograph, Seascape Head; he was beginning to establish himself in a wider sea. On leaving the Slade Breakey returned briefly to Northern Ireland, teaching art part-time at Carrickfergus Technical School and Hopefield School in Belfast. At this time, too, he got married, but soon he and his wife were back in London where he both taught and pursued his own work. His painting and printmaking — lithography has always been as important to Breakey as painting — in these years were almost entirely abstract and ‘Hard Edge’, which was the fashion at the time, but he later destroyed much of it. However he also made a number of constructions in perspex and other materials, which were inspired by the landscape, of which Pentarhythms, 1970 (Ulster Museum), is a good example. Throughout the 1960s Breakey exhibited back home in Belfast and in June 1962 he held his first one-man show, Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs, at Gallery 25 in Brunswich Street, Belfast. ‘There is nothing pretty here and the strength of the artist’s impulse may be momentarily taken for crudity, but a little reflection will reveal his thoroughness, his patient exploration to bring about these pictures, now finished and approved’, wrote A.W. Bowyer in his review for The Belfast Telegraph (5 June 1962). The force of his work was clearly apparent. In the following year, 1963, he exhibited with Malcolm Bennett, R.J. Croft, David Crone, Noel Millar, Cecil McCartney, John Pakenham and John B.

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Vallely in 8 Painters at the Magee Gallery in Belfast – ‘John Breakey’s work, apart from Landscape Markings and Mourne Road, suggests experiment rather than fulfilment’, A.W. Bowyer commented in the Belfast Telegraph (undated press cutting, artist’s papers) — an exhibition which was to be the first of a number of shows held in successive years under the name ‘Group 63’. And in the Arts Council’s Ulster Painting ’68 exhibition he had two pieces, Pink Perspex and Interlocking Blue Forms, which reflect his brief interest in making constructions. In 1973, after a decade in London, the Breakeys returned to Northern Ireland and settled in Newcastle, County Down. John joined the staff of Rathfriland High School, where he taught until his retirement from teaching in 1985. Around the same time he established a print workshop, with the emphasis on lithography, and studio at his home.5 Also, in September of that year he held his second one-man show, at the Octagon Gallery, Belfast, showing constructions, lithographs, etchings and drawings. The 1980s and 1990s continued this pattern of both mixed and oneman exhibitions, of which the most notable were his joint show with R. J. Croft in Belfast’s Fenderesky Gallery in August 1985 — ‘The work in this exhibition is based on the Mourne Landscape. I have no desire to illustrate this landscape but rather to try to create images which have their own concentrated form of reality’, he wrote in the catalogue — and solo shows at the Ulster Arts Club in 1990, the Gordon Gallery, Londonderry, 1993, the Pantheon Gallery, Dublin, also 1993, and the Cavehill Gallery, Belfast, in 1994. As has been said, John Breakey’s early paintings and lithographs were abstract, but he has never felt comfortable working in that manner. He refuses to categorise his aesthetic, saying that he ‘paints his feelings’ rather than appearances, although since he gave up abstraction landscape is ever his subject matter. Since he settled at Newcastle the landscape of the Mourne Mountains and the sea have dominated his output – ‘the landscape in the Mournes is different every time I look at it,’ he told Brian McAvera6 – his execution becoming boldly expressionist, his brushwork malerisch and his colours often strident in their intensity and power. Yet there remains in his work an intense celebration of ‘place’ – something that he ascribes to Charles Lamb – and an absence of sentiment of any kind. In 1990 Breakey was elected a full academician of the Royal Ulster Academy, which was an accolade on his career. Also that year he was one of eight lithographers chosen worldwide to attend the famous Tamarind Institute at Albuquerque, New Mexico, a course of study that lasted four months. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Breakey made a number of paintings which, landscape-based, were influenced by the Ulster ‘troubles’ of those years. One can see the beginnings of this development in Uneasy Calm, 1989 (fig. 1), and Gorse Tormented by the Wind, c.1990. The former is based on the sea front at Newcastle, but conveys a sense of unease and tension which becomes more overt in A Field of Crosses for Ulster, 1990 (fig. 2). In the latter work the landscape of the Mourne Mountains provides the setting while boulders strewn across the scene become crosses and hence symbols for a society tearing itself apart. Besides the strong red at the top of the composition – a bloodied land (?) – the colours are muted,

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even dark and menacing. Interviewing the artist for the Ulster Architect in 1990 Anne Davey Orr commented that A Field of Crosses marked ‘the first appearance of anything political’ in Breakey’s work.7 This trend continued in Gorse Totem, 1992, and may be read in one or two contemporary pictures, although it was short lived – Ian Hill noted the ‘lighter and brighter’ pictures in his Gordon Gallery show in 19938 – and already in The Gorse Hill, also 1992 (fig. 3), and A Walk in Autumn, 1993, we see him in a lighter mood and heading towards the more representational manner of Luke’s Mountain, 1994, and The Knitters’ House, 1995, the latter being a glorious panorama of the Mournes. If Breakey’s treatment of the landscape is intensely personal, his manner of working is also distinctive. He frequently makes drawings, but these serve as little more than aides memoires, as it’s really his feelings for a place that interest him. To begin with he usually resolves his feelings, the mood and the compositional elements in small pictures, which are then translated onto much larger canvases, although the small pieces he considers as works in their own right, rather than mere studies for the final pictures. Many of the pieces in the present exhibition illustrate this process. For example, A Ploughed field was once There is the forerunner of Spring was only Yesterday, the former being clearly at a more experimental stage of development than the succinct treatment of the latter. By working in this manner and exhibiting both pieces, as in this show, we as spectators share a privileged glimpse of the artist’s creative impulse. The pictures in this exhibition are light in mood and evoke a joie de vivre. That Sunny Day with the Yellow Gorse, 2007, is a good example, the colours and the bravura brushwork being perfectly matched. The rise of the mountain we have seen many times in, for example, the Field of Crosses and The Gorse Hill pictures and it is the same hill that occupies the background in the Luke’s Mountain composition. But besides the mountains, the sea at Newcastle has provided Breakey with a constantly renewable source of subject matter, as can be seen to effect in his diverse treatment of The Sea Within the Wave, 2006, Active Sky Tranquil Sea, 2009, and The Calm Before the Storm, 2009, a pastel. The almost sensuous nature of the latter, which owes much to the medium, also conveys the deftness of Breakey’s draughtsmanship, an inheritance from Newton Penpraze and Romeo Toogood. In The Taste of the Sea, 2005, a watercolour, the title suggests an almost literal interpretation of the subject and hence gently dramatizes the artist’s statement that it is his feelings for the scene that are paramount. Precipitation, 2006, I Don’t remember everything about that Day, 2010, and That Cold Crisp Day at the Beach, 2010 – which gives its name to this exhibition – have much in common in the expressive character of the eager brushwork and their emphasis on the existential business of painting. John Breakey’s absence from Ireland for a decade in the 1960s and early 1970s has meant that his work is less well known here than it deserves to be. He is, in Brian McAvera’s words, one of the unsung petit maitres of Irish art,9 although as we have seen he is not really such a ‘petit’ master, having developed an independent manner of execution in a variety of media and a distinctive approach to his subject matter. Being essentially a landscapist, too, places him in a long tradition of Irish painting to which he had made an original contribution.

FOOTNOT ES

Bruce Arnold, A Concise History of Irish Art, London, Thames and Hudson, revised ed., 1977, pp. 139-40. 2 John Hewitt, Art in Ulster: 1, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1977, p. 98. 3 Kenneth Jamison, ‘Painting and Sculpture’, in M. Longley (ed.), Causeway: The Arts in Ulster, Belfast and Dublin, 1971, p.59. For a detailed note on R. C. Toogood and his career see S. B. Kennedy, R. C. Toogood 1902-1966, exhibition catalogue, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast, April 1978. 4 John Breakey, notes to an invitation card to the opening of his one-man exhibition of Lithographs, Oil paintings, Pastels and Watercolours, Bell Gallery, Belfast, 29 April 2002. 5 The print workshop was finally dismantled in August 2010. 6 Brian McAvera, ‘The Lithographer’s Mark’, Irish Arts Review, Spring 2008, p. 9. 7 Anne Davey Orr, ‘Stones Become Crosses; Crosses Become Stones,’ Ulster Architect, October 1990, p. 42. 8 Unidentified press cutting, 8 April 1993, artist’s papers. 9 McAvera, 2008, p. 3 1

CATALOGUE OF WORKS

THE BEACH IS THE BEACH 2003 | oil on canvas | 137cm x 152cm

THE SEA WITHIN THE WAVE 2006 | oil on canvas | 142cm x 152cm

SPRING TIDE 2006 | oil on canvas | 142cm x 152cm

PRECIPITATION 2006 | oil on canvas | 142cm x 152cm

SPRING WAS ONLY YESTERDAY 2007 | oil on canvas | 92cm x 122cm

THE SUNNY DAY WITH THE YELLOW GORSE 2007 | oil on canvas | 102cm x 127cm

THAT COLD CRISP DAY AT THE BEACH 2010 | oil on canvas | 122cm x 122cm

AN AUTUMN WALK 2003 | oil on canvas | 137cm x 152cm

THE HIGH ROAD 1990 | oil on canvas | 15cm x 20cm

SPRING TIDE 2006 | oil on canvas | 25cm x 30cm

A PLOUGHED FIELD WAS ONCE THERE 2007 | oil on canvas | 25cm x 30cm

DESCENDING MIST 2007 | oil on canvas | 25cm x 30cm

DISAPPEARING MOUNTAIN 2008 | oil on canvas | 25cm x 30cm

CRISP SPRING DAY 2010 | oil on canvas | 24cm x 19cm

THAT QUIET DAY 2009 | oil on canvas | 30cm x 36cm

ACTIVE SKY TRANQUIL SEA 2009 | oil on canvas | 25cm x 20cm

I DON’T REMEMBER EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT DAY 2010 | oil on canvas | 30cm x 25cm

THE TASTE OF THE SEA 2005 | watercolour on paper | 78cm x 97cm

THE WET FIELD 2004 | watercolour on paper | 80cm x 97cm

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 2009 | pastel on paper | 80cm x 97cm

THE HIDDEN COLOURS OF A MISTY DAY 2009 | pastel on paper | 82cm x 97cm

BIOGRAPHY 1932

Born in Belfast.

1950

Elected a member of the Ulster Academy of Arts.

1953-58 Belfast College of Art. 1958-60 Slade School of Fine Art, London University. 1973 Settled at Newcastle, Co. Down. Taught at Rathfriland High School until 1985, before retiring from teaching to concentrate on running his print workshop. 1990

Elected an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy.

1990 One of eight lithographers chosen worldwide to attend the Tamarind Institute at Albuquerque, 58

New Mexico, USA. 1991

Elected a member of the Ulster Arts Club.

1994 His Self Portrait presented to the University of Limerick. The work is a dyptich, one part being a portrait, the other an abstract based on Slieve Donard.

PREVIOUS ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS 1962

Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs by John Breakey, Gallery 25, Belfast, 4-23 June.

1973 John Breakey, Octagon Gallery, Belfast, 14-29 September. 1984

John Breakey: Drawings, Paintings and Lithographs, Grant Fine Art, Newcastle, 26 October - 14 November.

1990 John Breakey: Paintings, Ulster Arts Club Gallery, Belfast, from 8 November. 1992 John Breakey, Monaghan Museum, Monaghan. 1993

John Breakey, Gordon Gallery, Londonderry, April.

1993

John Breakey: Paintings and Lithography, Pantheon Gallery, Dublin, 1 - 25 September.

1994

John Breakey, Cavehill Gallery, Belfast, 3 - 19 November.

1996

John Breakey, Down County Museum, Downpatrick.

1999

John Breakey, Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim.

2002 Lithographs, Oil Paintings, Pastels and Watercolours by John Breakey, Bell Gallery, Belfast, 11 - 29 April. 2003

John Breakey, St. Patrick’s Centre, Downpatrick.

2003

John Breakey, William Carlton Summer School.

2007

‘My View from the Mournes’ by John Breakey, Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick, until 22 December.

2007

John Breakey, Lagan Island Arts Centre, Lisburn.

PUBLIC AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS Allied Irish Bank Arts Council of Northern Ireland British Telecom, Belfast Department of Finance and Personnel, Northern Ireland Down County Museum, Downpatrick First Trust Bank Hastings Group of Hotels Heathrow Airport, London Monaghan Museum, Monaghan Northern Bank Queenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s University, Belfast Royal Ulster Academy SDLP, Belfast Ulster Bank University of Cambridge University of Dublin University of Limerick University of London University of Oxford Ulster Museum, Belfast Also represented in numerous private collections in Ireland, England, Canada, Germany, Turkey, USA.

S B Kennedy was formerly Head of Fine and Applied Art at the Ulster Museum, Belfast and is now a freelance curator and consultant. His research interests have centred on developments in twentieth-century Irish Art. His books include Irish Art and Modernism 1880-1950, for which he received the prestigious Sunday Independent/Irish Life Visual Arts Award in 1991, Great Irish Artists: from Lavery to Le Brocquy, Gill and MacMillan, 1997, and monographs on the painters Frank McKelvey, T P Flanagan and David Crone. His biography of Paul Henry (1876-1958) was published in 2000 by Yale University Press and was reissued in 2007 along with a catalogue raisonnĂŠ of Henryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oeuvre.