THE JOKER’S CHAIR AN APPROPRIATE MEMORIAL TO DERMOT MORGAN AKA FATHER TED
Erected with the generous assistance of RTEÌ and Dublin City Council
There are two types of people in the World: [1] Those who hated Father Ted [2] Those who loved Father Ted. My mother, who was 100 in May, switched from [1] to [2] about two years ago … I have no idea why. She still hates “Mrs Brown”.
Joker’s Chair was erected in the memory of the writer, actor, satirist and comic Dermot Morgan (1952-1998), who achieved international renown for his role as Father Ted Crilly in the much loved and successful sitcom Father Ted. The inscription which accompanies this piece reads; ….and all the rest is laughter laughter liberating laughter to be remembered.
The artist Catherine Greene was born in Galway and studied at the National College of Art and Design from 1979-85. Her sculpture has a comical spirituality that seems to prevail throughout her work. This nod to humour and the less obvious is particularly appropriate in this piece as it appears to fittingly capture Dermot Morgan’s comical spirit.
Greene was approached by Dermot Morgan’s partner to create the memorial which was funded by RTEÌ and supported by Dublin City Council. A condition of the commission was that it should be an allegorical piece rather than a representative image.
Greene saw Dermot as being like the modern day seer who never feared to tell the truth, cleverly, searingly and with verve. This led her to the idea of the Shakespearean fool, who was always the closest to to the throne and who never feared to tell the truth. She felt it would be important for the public to engage with the artwork so she created a throne and if one looks just underneath the seat, you will see an eye, which for Greene represents the knowing eye. The balls on the top of the seat for her are like the hat of the jester. All these elements create a sense of fun and comedy about the piece. Joker’s Chair fits well within Greene’s work in that during the years preceding this commission she had been making small thrones as she was caught up with the idea of absence within her work.
The square was laid out after 1762 and was largely complete by the beginning of the 19th century. The demand for such Georgian townhouse residences south of the River Liffey had been fuelled by the decision of the then Earl of Kildare (later the Duke of Leinster) to build his Dublin home on the then undeveloped south-side. He constructed the largest aristocratic residence in Dublin, Leinster House, second only to Dublin Castle. As a result of this construction, three new residential squares appeared on the Southside: Merrion Square (facing the garden front of Leinster House), St Stephen’s Green, and the smallest and last to be built, Fitzwilliam Square.
Aristocrats, bishops and the wealthy sold their north-side townhouses and migrated to the new south-side developments.
The earliest plan of the park shows a double line of trees around the perimeter which was later enclosed by railings in the early years of the 19th century. A Jardin Anglaise approach was adopted for the layout of the park with contoured grass areas, informal tree clumps, sunken curved paths and perimeter planting.
Up until the 1960s, the park was only open to residents in possession of a private key. Now managed by Dublin City Council, the park contains a statue of Oscar Wilde, who resided in No. 1, Merrion Square from 1855 to 1876, many other sculptures and a collection of old Dublin lamp standards [was removed a few years ago].
The Irish American sculptor Jerome Connor, best known for his work Nuns of the Battlefield in Washington DC, designed the public art piece, “Eire”. The park also contains a sculpture of a Joker’s Chair in memory of Father Ted star Dermot Morgan.
The park in the square was called “Archbishop Ryan Park”, after Dermot Ryan, the Catholic archbishop who transferred ownership to the city. In 2009, Dermot Ryan was criticised in the Murphy Report; in January 2010, Dublin City Council sought public views on renaming the Park. In September 2010, the City Council voted to rename the park as Merrion Square Park.
The park was also used by the St John Ambulance Brigade for annual events such as review and first aid competitions. The organisation was founded in 1903 by Sir John Lumsden K.B.E., M.D. During this time Dr Lumsden was living nearby at 4 Fitzwilliam Place. He was the chief medical officer at the Guinness brewery and practised at Mercer’s Hospital.
During the First World War, both St. John Ambulance and the British Red Cross Society worked together in a joint effort as part of the war effort. This ensured services did not overlap with each other. Both organisations were a familiar sight among Irish people but particularly at Merrion Square where St. John Ambulance operated for almost 50 years. The headquarters of St. John Ambulance was situated at 40 Merrion Square during WWI later moving to 14 Merrion Square. Today they are located at Lumsden House, 29 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4.
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL Æ [MERRION SQUARE PUBLIC PARK]
This bust to commemorate the poet and artist George William Russell (1867-1935) was unveiled on the day of the 50th anniversary of Æ’s death.
George William Russell, who wrote under the pseudonym Æ, was an Irish nationalist, writer, editor, critic, poet, and painter, and a lead- ing light in the Co-operative Movement He was also a mystical writer and a personage of a group of devotees of theosophy in Dublin for many years. In around 1980, the maquette of this portrait bust emerged in the ownership of Donal Ó Murchadha who had rescued it in the 1940s from Jerome Connor’s Dublin studio following the death of the impoverished artist. It was brought to the attention of the Æ Commemoration Committee. The Co-operative Movement gathered the necessary resources to place this bronze bust in Merrion Square.
Born in Co. Kerry, Jerome Connor emigrated, with his family, to Massachusetts in 1888. He trained as a stone carver and moved to New York, where he became an accomplished sculptor. Throughout his life he worked on numerous public monument commissions in the United States and Ireland. In 1914 he was commissioned to produce a statue of the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet for the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He returned to Ireland in 1925 and regularly exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin and the Royal Academy, London.
HENRY GRATTAN IN MERRION SQUARE PARK BY PETER GRANT
Henry Grattan (1982) By Peter Grant (1915-2003) Sponsored by Public Subscription
The Right Hon. Henry Grattan (1746-1820) was an Irish politician and member of the Irish House of Commons.
As a strenuous and determined campaigner for constitutional and political rights, he campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament during the 18th century. Grattan retired from the House of Commons in 1797 in protest over his proposed political reforms being ignored. He was convinced that in the absence of vital and fundamental reform, Ireland was drifting towards rebellion.
In his 24-page “Letter to the citizens of Dublin”, Grattan ex- plained his dramatic decision. In order to “save the country”, he wrote, it was “absolutely necessary to reform the state”. The “continuation of the old system” would lead to Ireland’s downfall because the people no longer had confidence in parliament. Grattan returned to parliament to voice his opposition against the Act of Union in 1801 and continued to advocate for political reform and crusade against corruption until his death in 1820.
Created by sculptor Peter Grant, this commemorative portrait bust is a distinctive example of Grant’s style of public sculpture. While study- ing art Grant avoided naturalism instead being influenced by Egyptian sculpture.
Between the wars there was considerable interest in Egyptian art following the excavations of Tutankhamen’s tomb. During his years specialising in sculpture Grant also extended his education by reading extensively into theoretical texts as there was no art historical teaching at the National College of Art at that time.
He was attracted to the history of the church in the Middle Ages and was influenced by the formalised structure of pre-classical sculpture. His use of the spatula rather than his hands helped him to achieve an expressive and non- naturalistic style. Grant’s most important pieces of public sculpture were commemorative, the majority being either political or religious.
Of his politically themed public sculpture, Henry Grattan is one, while in general they were all centred on Irish nationalist commemoration. In dealing with portraits of the deceased like Grattan, Grant said: ‘I was happier dealing with a posthumous portrait; I had to rely on anatomy, and knowledge of the structure of the head. It was architectural.’ He believed there was a greater aesthetic freedom of style in such cases than in naturalistic portraiture from life and avoided surface texture, prefer- ring facets and planes. He also made quite a number of other small pieces such as the lion’s heads for the Rutland Fountain in 1975.
THERE ARE THREE ELEMENTS TO THE OSCAR WILDE SCULPTURE IN MERRION SQUARE – ARTIST DANNY OSBORNE
Normally it is difficult to photograph this sculpture because it is a major tourist attraction but today the park was close to empty.
Danny Osborne is an artist born in Dorset, England in 1949.He is a resident of Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada and Cork, Ireland. Osborne studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art. He is best known for his public sculptures, particularly his Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture “The Quare in the Square in Merrion Square Park” (originally commissioned by Guinness Ireland Group for £45,000 and located across from Ireland’s National Gallery.
I like to listen to the tourist guides explaining this public art installation to visitors from all parts of the world and how often their descriptions are incorrect or incomplete. But, of course, the exact details are not all that important.
In 2016 I mentioned that the restoration of the Oscar Wilde installation had been completed with the return of the two minor bronzes to their plinths. The stone plinths or pillars are covered in quotations from Wilde. One has a bronze figure of a pregnant naked woman kneeling on the top, while the other has a bronze male torso. One explanation is that they indicate Wilde’s ambiguous sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.
At the time I also reported that the orientation of the female nude has been corrected. It should be noted that the female nude is Oscar’s wife [Constance Lloyd] who was pregnant when Oscar had his first homosexual encounter. Originally she was facing Oscar but someone tried to steal the bronze and when the park staff restored it they installed it facing the wrong direction and then the tour guides came up with stories to explain why she had turned her back on her husband.
She is facing a different direction now but I am not 100% convinced that one could claim that she is now facing Oscar. Maybe she should be on the other plinth.
The sculptor Danny Osborne used complementary colour stones and also sought out stones with varying textures to give a more lifelike representation of Oscar Wilde than you would find in a conventional statue.
Wilde’s jacket is green stone which is complemented by red stone cuffs. The sculpture includes two stone pillars which are covered in quotations by Oscar Wilde. Placed on top of the pillars are two sculptures, one of the sculptures is a bronze figure of a pregnant naked woman kneeling this represents Oscars wife Constance, while the other pillar has a bronze male torso.
The two pillars which flank Oscar Wilde on both sides are used to set out his thoughts, opinions, witticisms on art and life for all to see and judge. These quotes were selected by a mixture of poets, public figures, artists, and scientists, who use Wilde’s own words to pay tribute to him.
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