Mainie Jellett
An Appreciation
A Machine Readable Version
Thomas MacGreevy
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Full Colophon Information[p.3]
The death occurred in Dublin nursing home yesterday of Mainie Jellett, the well-known artist.
Her work as a theorist alone, writes T. McG. in an appreciation, would have ensured her a lasting place in the history of art in Ireland. But Mainie Jellett was more than a theorist. For nearly twenty years, since she first began her work as an art teacher in Dublin, she had been an inspiration to young artists.
It is, however, as an artist that posterity, will tend to estimate Mainie Jellett, and it is now a matter for rejoicing among her friends and admirers that they were able in her lifetime to give expression to their appreciation of the richness of her gifts, particularly as revealed in such pictures of her last years, as " The Ninth Hour" and " Madonna of Eire ." The latter was first exhibited only last autumn at the Living Art Exhibition.
Miss Jellett was the daughter of the late William Jellett K.C. , and Mrs. Jellett, of 36 Fitzwilliam square, Dublin . Her family was always associated with artistic and musical activities in Dublin — Miss Bay Jellett, the well-known violinist, is one of her sisters — and Mainie opted for painting when she was a very young girl. At the Dublin Metropolitan School (now the National College) of Art she was a Taylor prize-winner. From there she went to study under Sickert at the Westminster School of Art. And then she went to join her fellow student friend, Erie Hone, in France.
Albert Gleize was one of the most distinguished modern artists in Paris, but he had never thought of teaching till two unknown and very serious young Irish girls introduced themselves and announced diffidently that they had studied his exhibited work and wished him to be their teacher! But he took them on, and, in both cases, Ireland has occasion to be gratified at the results of her children's daring.