CAG.0061 Margaret Clarke, Portrait of Lennox Robinson, 1926, oil on canvas, 61 x 55.6 cm. Purchased, Dawson Gallery, 1950 (Gibson Bequest Fund). © the artist’s estate.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

Holding our gaze through metal-framed spectacles, Portrait of Lennox Robinson (1926) by Margaret Clarke presents its subject as both still and restless.

Seated on a cane-backed chair against a grey-blue background, then 40-year-old playwright Lennox Robinson (1886-1958) is dressed in dark jacket, theatrical red shirt and dark bowtie.

It is one of three portraits of Robinson in the Collection – the others being by Seán O’Sullivan and William Rothenstein – and was painted in the same year as his play, The Big House, and the Abbey Theatre’s first run of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars. Considering the plays originating in other countries of the period, Robinson noted that ‘being brought into touch with other minds who have different values of life, suddenly we shall discover the rich material that lies to our hand in Ireland.’

Robinson was a great friend of the artist and her husband, Harry Clarke, whom he acknowledged in his autobiography, Curtain Up, as a ‘supreme artist.’ He was to accompany the ailing Harry to Davos, Switzerland in autumn 1930 and would sadly write his obituary just a few months later (The Irish Times, 7 January 1931).

Upon his own death in 1959, Robinson bequeathed thirteen artworks to the Collection, including those by George Atkinson, Margaret Clarke, David Hone, William John Leech, Norah McGuinness, and Jack B. Yeats.

Margaret Clarke (1884-1961) was born in Newry, County Down and studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where she was considered to be among William Orpen’s best students. She won medals at the Aonach Tailteann (Tailteann Games) of 1924, 1928, and 1932, and was elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1927.

Portrait of Lennox Robinson (1926) by Margaret Clarke is featured in ALL EYES ON US until 24 March.

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