Decorative Landscape

Artist Jean Lurçat (1892 - 1966)

Date1932

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions188 x 129.5 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1934. © The Estate of Jean Lurçat.

Object number709

Description'Decorative Landscape' caused some excitement when it arrived in Dublin. It was so uncompromisingly modern that Sarah Purser was afraid to show it to the director of the gallery 'lest it give him a fit... To tell the truth', she wrote to Thomas MacGreevy in Paris, 'I am a little nervous about its acceptance and reception by our rather 'arrière' public - it is very queer - tho' a lovely colour - only the aspidistra one is sure of - our idea is that the artist looked out of a window (with a weird curtain) and saw an inundated country - and in the glass the reflection of light behind him' (1). Her anxiety was well founded, the picture was maliciously damaged when it was hung in 1935. Samuel Beckett, also writing to MacGreevy after this event, says 'A large hole was clean through the middle sky with scratches extending left to the ‘magic’ ledgy passage and what looks like spit marks.”
(1) P. Boylan, 'All Cultivated People', Gerrards Cross, 1988, pp. 187-189

(Extract from 'Images and Insights', Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1993, p. 258)

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