HIBERNIAN ACADEMY – FIRST IMPRESSIONS, BY CRUISE O’BRIEN
‘It is pleasant to find that peace is so far advanced that we can again have our annual exhibition of the Academy. Unfortunately, the Academy is still homeless* and has to wander from place to place from the Metropolitan School of Art to the R.D.S. premises at Ballsbridge, where this year it finds a temporary home. 

This is the centenary year of the Academy’s charter and it would be a fitting act that Government should help the Council to secure a local habitation.

The [RHA Annual] Exhibition this year is much above the average standard of other years and the President and Council are to be congratulated on having got together a collection at once varied, interesting and representative.

The picture of the yearis the Lavery canvas called “The Blessing of the Colours”. It is a fine piece, perfectly balanced, in composition and with a quite beautiful treatment of the light. In order to achieve the symmetry of his composition, however, Sir John Lavery has had to sacrifice some correctness of detail. For it is not usual, I think, to bless the Colours in the position in which the officer in the picture holds them. They should be dipped. That, however, is a minor point. The picture is one of which the Irish nation can be proud.’

[Extract from Irish Independent, 14 August 1923]

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