A Familiar Face in Belfast

My favorite place to eat in downtown Santa Cruz is Rosie McCann’s. I remember when it opened, soon after the Earthquake. A pub! With food! And music! I loved the Poet nd Patriot more, but Rosie McCann’s had Irish nachos.

As you walk in, you see above the bar a picture of a sad beautiful woman. Most people assume she’s Rosie McCann herself, from “The Star of the County Down.”

 

It's Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann,
She's the star of the County Down

From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay and
From Galway to Dublin Town,
No maid I've seen like the brown colleen
That I met in the County Down.

It’s such a fun song to sing, and the chorus takes your mind on a tour of the island, south to north, west to east. 

But the painting above the bar is Portrait of Lady Lavery as Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Stop in and see the original at the National Gallery next time you’re in Dublin.

Kathleen Ni Houlihan is a pre-independence symbol of the nation of Ireland. It is she who sings of her Four Green Fields, and mourns the “one in bondage.” She is sometimes described as a “poor old woman,” but during the Celtic Revival, she began appearing as a young woman, rejuvenated by sacrifice, reborn in a new country.

In 1927 that new country commissioned Belfast-born, high-society London portrait painter, John Lavery, to provide the image on the new currency. He chose his wife Hazel as model, as he did for more than 400 other of his paintings. Honestly, who wouldn’t?

Just look at her.

For nearly 50 years, everybody in Ireland carried the Lady Lavery portrait in their wallets, the personification of their country: melancholy, gorgeous, and a myth that can never be accurately told.

She was born Hazel Martyn, in 1880, to a wealthy Chicago family. She married at 23, was widowed five months later, and bore a daughter. Beset by still more tragedies, she left America for Europe. She had already met the much-older John Lavery and they came to love each other. They had to wait until her mother died to finally marry. John was knighted because the British aristocracy loved his portraits of themselves, and Hazel became Lady Lavery. 

Even her real life has its myths. People often say she had an affair with Michael Collins, but I don’t believe it. I prefer the story about how she taught Winston Churchill to paint, giving him a lifetime of artistic bliss that saved his sanity. She lived her amazing life, from nouveau riche heiress to the face of a new nation. 

The Punt isn’t the only example of Lady Lavery appearing as allegory. There’s a John Lavery painting of her in Belfast I’ve long wanted to see, and last week I was able to visit. I walked to the church not too far from City Hall. I found the picture, and as usual was left with another mystery. 

Just as the Great War ended, on the occasion of Hazel converting to Catholicism, John Lavery donated an altar and triptych to his family church, St. Patrick’s. He named the painting Madonna of the Lakes.

This is how I first saw it. 

You can find a better image of it. The painting is behind glass, reflecting dozens of lamps and windows that spoil every picture

I walked closer. There is Kathleen Ni Houlihan: young and vital, stepping out from the Killarney lakes I know so well, the Macgillycuddy Reeks behind her. 

It’s Hazel—unmistakable— but not so sad this time; she’s cautiously optimistic. 

Her gown, not blue, but green and gold, like the mountains of Kerry.

The saints at her feet are Ireland’s saints, Patrick and Brigid. Not only did John depict these saints as children, but the models are their own children; his daughter Eileen and Hazel’s daughter Alice.

St. Patrick reaches for his mother, obviously saying, “Pick me up.” 

St. Brigid, the elder of the two, bows in adoration of the land of Ireland, closing her arms in contemplation. 

. 

As religious and patriotic art goes, this is one of the best at doing its job while remaining an aesthetic joy to behold. 

I was able to stay in the church by myself for as long as I wanted, absorbing the picture, rapt.

After some time, I realized there was no altar. A triptych like this is meant to rise behind a small altar along the nave. The bog oak cross in the middle is the sort of thing that would stand on a that altar.

I assumed that John donated his painting, but perhaps the altar was never completed, like so many things that didn’t happen around the time of the Great War.

It was only later that I learned that there was an altar, installed in this church at the same time as the painting. It was there as late as 1977 when an art historian mentioned it, but by 1995 when the church burned and this painting was saved, the altar was gone, and no one knows where it is.

Something happened. Someone knows. Nobody is talking about it. It disappeared too late to have been “Vatican II’d.” It wouldn’t have ended up in a skip. I’d bet it’s in a rich person’s private chapel and nobody is saying nothing to nobody. 

This was the first time I’ve been able to walk around Belfast, and I even took the bus tour and saw the Peace Walls and the murals. Perhaps I am mistaken, but all day long I noticed signs that felt like something left unsaid. The obviously unsaid-thing is not uncommon in Ireland, but I noticed it more in the North, and I noticed it everywhere in Belfast.

But that’s another post.