Howard Helmick R.B.A. 1840-1907
Modelling for the Madonna: The Village Altarpiece
Oil on canvas, 84.4 x 70.2 cm.
Signed
In a small church in the West of Ireland, a travelling artist has been called from his plein air studies or, perhaps, the diligent ethnographic recording of the costumes and customs of the local inhabitants (of the sort in which Helmick specialised) to take on a more ambitious artistic project, specifically to paint an altarpiece for the parish. Watched by a kindly priest, the artist perches on a stool placed, slightly precariously, on the altar and paints a figure of the Madonna which is based on the young colleen who stands, demure, if somewhat abashed by the attention, on a chair to the right of the composition. Her devoted suitor, meanwhile, looks on with rapt attention. The theme of a young woman (sometimes worthy, sometimes less so) being elevated through art into a representation of the Mother of God has a long history going back to Filippo Lippi painting his mistress (a nun) in the role (c. 1460) or, in the 1890s, the young girl Angelina Bovo and her baby brother taking the part in Roberto Ferruzzi’s La Madonnina or the ‘Madonna of the Streets’. Helmick’s innovation is to make the theme the subject of a painting – and doing so charmingly. The young couple appear again in Helmick’s The Country Dancing Master, West of Ireland (private collection) exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and the girl in Asking for Directions (private collection), of the following year, and this is likely to be the approximate date of our picture. In addition to its hints at the revival of Catholic religious art in nineteenth-century Ireland and perhaps, too, at the hierarchy of artistic genres, it is an image of self-referentiality, as the artist paints an image of an artist (himself) painting. In its subject of an artist at work within a local community – and with the theme of painting being the subject of the composition – the picture may be compared with Harry Jones Thaddeus’s, The Friends of the Model (1881, National Gallery of Ireland).
Modelling for the Madonna: The Village Altarpiece
Oil on canvas, 84.4 x 70.2 cm.
Signed
In a small church in the West of Ireland, a travelling artist has been called from his plein air studies or, perhaps, the diligent ethnographic recording of the costumes and customs of the local inhabitants (of the sort in which Helmick specialised) to take on a more ambitious artistic project, specifically to paint an altarpiece for the parish. Watched by a kindly priest, the artist perches on a stool placed, slightly precariously, on the altar and paints a figure of the Madonna which is based on the young colleen who stands, demure, if somewhat abashed by the attention, on a chair to the right of the composition. Her devoted suitor, meanwhile, looks on with rapt attention. The theme of a young woman (sometimes worthy, sometimes less so) being elevated through art into a representation of the Mother of God has a long history going back to Filippo Lippi painting his mistress (a nun) in the role (c. 1460) or, in the 1890s, the young girl Angelina Bovo and her baby brother taking the part in Roberto Ferruzzi’s La Madonnina or the ‘Madonna of the Streets’. Helmick’s innovation is to make the theme the subject of a painting – and doing so charmingly. The young couple appear again in Helmick’s The Country Dancing Master, West of Ireland (private collection) exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and the girl in Asking for Directions (private collection), of the following year, and this is likely to be the approximate date of our picture. In addition to its hints at the revival of Catholic religious art in nineteenth-century Ireland and perhaps, too, at the hierarchy of artistic genres, it is an image of self-referentiality, as the artist paints an image of an artist (himself) painting. In its subject of an artist at work within a local community – and with the theme of painting being the subject of the composition – the picture may be compared with Harry Jones Thaddeus’s, The Friends of the Model (1881, National Gallery of Ireland).
Modelling for the Madonna: The Village Altarpiece
Oil on canvas, 84.4 x 70.2 cm.
Signed
In a small church in the West of Ireland, a travelling artist has been called from his plein air studies or, perhaps, the diligent ethnographic recording of the costumes and customs of the local inhabitants (of the sort in which Helmick specialised) to take on a more ambitious artistic project, specifically to paint an altarpiece for the parish. Watched by a kindly priest, the artist perches on a stool placed, slightly precariously, on the altar and paints a figure of the Madonna which is based on the young colleen who stands, demure, if somewhat abashed by the attention, on a chair to the right of the composition. Her devoted suitor, meanwhile, looks on with rapt attention. The theme of a young woman (sometimes worthy, sometimes less so) being elevated through art into a representation of the Mother of God has a long history going back to Filippo Lippi painting his mistress (a nun) in the role (c. 1460) or, in the 1890s, the young girl Angelina Bovo and her baby brother taking the part in Roberto Ferruzzi’s La Madonnina or the ‘Madonna of the Streets’. Helmick’s innovation is to make the theme the subject of a painting – and doing so charmingly. The young couple appear again in Helmick’s The Country Dancing Master, West of Ireland (private collection) exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and the girl in Asking for Directions (private collection), of the following year, and this is likely to be the approximate date of our picture. In addition to its hints at the revival of Catholic religious art in nineteenth-century Ireland and perhaps, too, at the hierarchy of artistic genres, it is an image of self-referentiality, as the artist paints an image of an artist (himself) painting. In its subject of an artist at work within a local community – and with the theme of painting being the subject of the composition – the picture may be compared with Harry Jones Thaddeus’s, The Friends of the Model (1881, National Gallery of Ireland).