William Crozier (1930-2011) ‘Flanders Fields’, 1962 © Estate of William Crozier © NGI (Click on image to enlarge it).
William Crozier’s Flanders Fields (1962) – one of the most recent acquisitions at National Gallery of Ireland – goes on view today in the Irish galleries of the Millennium Wing. Flander’s Fields is an animated composition of an isolated naked figure crouching and appears engulfed by a whirlwind of colour. It represents a sense of mortality and vulnerability, a universal quality that links it with other works in the collection, most notably, Jack B. Yeats’s Grief and Louis le Brocquy’s A Family. Glasgow-born Crozier (1930-2011) became an Irish citizen in 1973 and divided his time between Hampshire and Kilcoe in West Cork. He was a prominent figure in the London art world in the 1950’s and 1960’s and exhibited with, among others, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.
Sean Rainbird, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland said: “Flander’s Fields is a major work in the artist’s oeuvre of the early 1960’s and will take its place among a significant number of works of art which have been recently added to the collection. They include Colin Davidson’s portrait of the poet and anthologist, Michael Longley and Jacob Epstein’s bronze head of the eminent physician, Dr. Solomons Snr. These are works of the highest quality and we look forward to displaying more of them over the course of 2013.”
Among other recent acquisitions are: William Conor (1881-1968) Girl with Buckets, 1950’s; Sean Keating (1889-1977) Homage to Jimmy and Frans (Portrait of Jimmy O’Dea), 1963: Harry Aaron Kernoff (1920-1974) Miss Joan Wall (1920-2011), 1941: Jackie Nickerson (b.1960) Seamus Heaney (b. 1939), Poet, Playwright, Translator, Nobel Laureate, 2007: Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) Portrait of a Man, possibly Paul Sérusier, 1895; Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) In the Life Class, 1894; Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) Portrait of Mrs Mary Louise (May) Gwynn (d.1941), c.1903; Edward James Rogers (1872-1938) Sylvia, c. 1929 and AE [George Russell] (1867-1935) Fairies in a Wood.