This week we feature another guest post from a member of staff, this time from our Map Librarian, Paul Ferguson. When Paul said he’d write a piece on the former Exhibition Hall, we *knew* he was too young to have seen it as a member of staff, but this explains how he did – he was still at school at the time!
Main image of Paul Henry from ‘Paul Henry 1876-1958’ exhibition catalogue.
Few Library staff will recall when the podium basement of the Berkeley Library housed an exhibition space. Long before it became the periodicals reading room [now in the Ussher Library – Ed.] it was the Exhibition Hall of the New Library. I first visited the Library as a schoolboy on 1 November 1973 to see the Paul Henry retrospective in the Exhibition Hall just before the show moved to Belfast. My Saturday morning art teacher – artist W.G. Spencer – strongly encouraged his class to seize the opportunity to see a wonderful cross-section of Henry’s work gathered in one place. So I duly took the 46A into Grafton Street and, entering through Front Gate – no Nassau Street entrance in those days – ventured for the first time into Trinity College.
The entrance to the Exhibition Hall was through the Berkeley front doors, round by the side of the barrier and down the narrow stairs. The first landing was a gallery overlooking the exhibition area – now the route to Early Printed Books, the glass partitions are a much later addition. On the lower level, copies of the exhibition catalogue (which I still have) were on sale at the entrance to a space that occupied half the basement.
Cover of Paul Henry 1876-1958 exhibition catalogue.
I think the walls were painted white, and there was an internal stairs back up to the gallery. The ‘Guide to the Library’ in 1973 says that the other half of the basement, named as the ‘New Library Annexe’, contained the Lecky Library, the Music Library, and three lecture rooms, all accessed via a separate entrance beside the Museum Building [we’ve touched on this before – Ed.].
The exhibition catalogue lists 81 pictures on display, from Paul Henry’s early work showing the influence of the French impressionists, some of his meticulous charcoal sketches, and numerous Achill, Connemara and West of Ireland oil landscapes for which Paul Henry is best known. There was also a selection of his railway posters which had helped disseminate Henry’s iconic images of the West.
Internal page from Paul Henry 1876-1958 exhibition catalogue.
It was organised by the Trinity Exhibitions Committee led by Professor George Dawson of Genetics and Anne Crookshank of the fledgling Art History Department. Dawson was passionate about art, especially modern art, and, with the backing of the Arts Council, he had secured the basement area for changing contemporary exhibitions until the space was needed for storage. The ‘Guide to the Library’ describes the Exhibition Hall as ‘temporary’. Dawson was one of a group of Trinity’s resident academics who have contributed much to College life over the years.
Previously, an exhibition of Pablo Picasso had attracted an amazing attendance of 42,000 from May to August 1969 and made quite a stir in Dublin.
The pictures were loaned from mostly private collectors in Ireland and Britain. The opening on 8 October 1973 by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave was a big occasion not just because this was a retrospective of a major Irish artist, it was also a joint venture with the Ulster Museum and the Queen’s University Festival. Paul Henry was Belfast born. The Troubles had only begun in Northern Ireland and cross-border projects were rare and needed to be encouraged.
I don’t recall much more about the building or the pictures but I do remember seeing an elderly lady being shown round in a wheelchair. She seemed to be familiar with all the paintings and had a story or a recollection for each. I subsequently discovered that she was Paul Henry’s second wife, artist Mabel Young. His first marriage to painter Grace Mitchell ended in 1929 partly because of his affair with Mabel, though they did not marry until 1956 after Grace had died. Mrs Henry loaned about a third of the items to the exhibition including most of the charcoal drawings which my art teacher had so wanted us to see. She had attended the opening but this must have been her last opportunity to see her husband’s pictures before they moved to Belfast. Mrs Henry died the following February, and a few years later Paul and Mabel Henry’s private papers came to the Library where they now reside.
Mabel Henry in the Exhibition Hall – from the Irish Times, 10 October 1973.
Mabel Henry’s guide that afternoon was probably George Dawson. A key ambition for him was realised five years later when the custom-designed Douglas Hyde Gallery replaced the Exhibition Hall on the opening of the Arts Building in 1978 [so we are celebrating *that* anniversary in 2018 – Ed.].
Further reading
S.B. Kennedy, Paul Henry. (New Haven and London: Yale University P., 2000).
Catherine Giltrap (ed.), George Dawson: an unbiased eye; modern and contemporary art at Trinity College Dublin since 1959. (Dublin: Associated Editions, 2010).
Paul Henry 1876-1958. October 8 – November 3, Exhibition Hall, New Library, Trinity College Dublin; November 13 – January 2 Ulster Museum in association with Queen’s University Festival, Botanic Gardens, Belfast. With an introduction by George Dawson. (Dublin: Trinity College, 1973).
