Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 12th November 2018

26 20 Alfred W. Elmore RA (1815-1881) A Greek Ode (1879) signed lower right and dated 1879 oil on canvas 123.5 x 90.5cm (48 x 36in) Provenance: By descent to the artist’s daughter; Roy Miles Gallery, London: Stock No: 2081A (label verso); Private Collection Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879, No.213; €12,000-€18,000 (£10,714-£16,071) Born in Clonakilty, the son of a British army surgeon who had settled in West Cork, Alfred Elmore spent the first decade of his life in Ireland. His father married Mary Anne Callanan, of Clonakilty, whose father, a doctor, had been a member of the United Irishmen. After the pre- mature death of his mother, and failure of his father’s flax growing and linen manufacturing business, the family moved to London, where Alfred studied at the Royal Academy. He then spent time in Paris, attending life classes and copying paintings in the Louvre. After complet- ing a large canvas, The Martyrdom of Thomas a Becket (1840), commissioned by Daniel O’Connell for Westland Row Church in Dublin, Elmore travelled to Munich, where he studied at the Academy, before moving on to Dresden and then to Italy. Influenced by French painters such as Delacroix and Cogniat, Elmore was also inspired by literature and music. His 1844 painting Rienzi in the Forum relates to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Rienzi, the last of the Tribunes, published a decade earlier, and to Richard Wagner’s opera of the same name, per- formed in Dresden in 1842. Another novel by Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, inspired a later painting by Elmore, Pompeii - AD 79, in which a young woman plays with her child, oblivious to the volcano beginning its eruption in the distance. Perhaps because his mother was Catholic, and his father Protestant, many of Elmore’s paintings have a theme of religious and political freedom. Likewise, his father’s career in the linen industry is reflected in paintings by Elmore that depict technological progress. Even when depicting Classical scenes, as he did from the 1870s onward, Elmore’s psychological insight sets him apart from other artists who sought to represent ‘authentic’ scenes from ancient Greece and Rome, such as Frederick Leighton, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Edward Poynter. One of Elmore’s finest works, A Greek Ode was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879. In ancient Greece, an ode was a highly-stylised spoken poem: The Odes of Pindar were celebrated, while in Roman times the Odes of Catullus, recording the secret passion for the wife of a senator, were amongst the most highly-regarded love poems of classical literature. The form survived and was introduced into English literature in the 16th century by Edmund Spenser, whose Epithamialion and Prothamalion were written while he was living at Kilcolman Castle in Co. Cork. The title of Elmore’s painting evokes John Keats’s 1819 poem Ode to a Grecian Urn and is a neat inversion of the liter- ary technique of ‘ekphrasis’, where a painting or sculpture is described in a poem. In Elmore’s canvas, visual art is intended to evoke a work of literature. Classical subjects were in vogue at the Academy in the 1870’s, with Edward Poynter’s Zenobia Captive having been shown there in 1878, along with Frederick Leighton’s Winding the Skein. In Elmore’s painting, a dark-haired young man, reclining on a stone parapet, reads from a scroll to a young woman who sits, head in hand, listening. The composition recalls Winding the Skein, particularly in the choice of setting, with Classical figures on a long low wall, sea beyond, and a mountain range in the distance. Leighton had visited the island of Rhodes in 1867, as part of his research for authentic settings; Elmore spent time in Algeria in 1866, for the same reason. Although the subject of the ode in Elmore’s painting is not known, the serious expressions of reader and listener suggest that it does not deal with trivial matters. The young woman holds a laurel branch in her hand; she is waiting until the reading is finished before crowning the poet. Such accolades remain alive today in the designation “Poet Laureate”. In the painting there is also a suggestion of class difference, with the dark-haired poet dressed simply, in blue smock and straw hat. In contrast, the young woman’s cloak-a Greek garment known as a himation- is held at the shoulder by an elaborate brooch, while her dress, or chiton, is adorned at the sleeve with decorative buttons. Beside her, a lyre has been set to one side, indicating that she now prefers poetry to music. Above the lyre, on the stone bench, stands a silver ewer for water, and beside it, two small bronze basins for washing. The symbolism here is that of an awakening, the face been washed to face a new day. A palm-shaped fan lies discarded on the ground, hinting that the time for indolence is past. It is likely therefore that Elmore’s intention was to depict a moment of awakening, or revelation, when a young woman is inspired by the words of a poet. In an earlier painting, On the Brink (1865), Elmore had depicted a young woman, on the brink of being seduced, by a Satanic-like figure. However, in A Greek Ode, the young man is not sinister; rather he may be offering a means of escape. As is often the case with Elmore’s paintings, there is a sense of ambiguity, of decisions being made, or about to be made, that will affect the future lives of the protagonists. In depicting this moment of psychological ten- sion, set in Classical antiquity, Elmore departs from the standard Victorian approach to such scenes, which generally evoke little in the way of ideas, but are more essays in ‘dolce far niente’-the delights of doing nothing, in a world where youth, beauty and sunshine are eternal. In recent years, art historians Dr. Julian Campbell and Caoimhín de Bhalís have pioneered the re-discovery of this almost forgotten nine- teenth-century Cork artist; de Bhalís is currently working on a monograph on Alfred Elmore. Peter Murray, September 2018