Harry Aaron Kernoff, English, 1900-1974
Title: Davy Byrne's Pub, Dublin, from the Bailey
Date: 1941
Medium: Oil on board
Dimensions:
76 x 61 cm
Signed: lower right: Kernoff
Credit Line: Purchased, 2000
Object Number: NGI.4677
ProvenancePrivate collection; purchased, Sotheby's, London, 18 May 2000, lot 173
Exhibition HistoryRoyal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 1975, cat.1
Taking Stock: Acquisitions 2000-2010, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 13 March 2010 - 25 July 2010
Taking Stock: Acquisitions 2000-2010, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 13 March 2010 - 25 July 2010
Label TextKernoff depicted Dublin’s so-called 'Literary Pubs' as places of social and cultural importance where poets, writers, artists, journalists and intellectuals congregated. Asserting his own membership of this community, he includes himself here, instantly recognisable in spectacles and trilby. Two playbills, visible behind the bar, point to the role of the pubs in the promotion of the theatre. One advertises Brinsley MacNamara’s Look at the Heffernans at the Abbey, the other Lord Longford’s production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Gate, a witty juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy.