Bellview Steps, Belfast Zoo

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Harry Aaron Kernoff , English, 1900-1974

Title

Date1935

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensions

28.5 × 30 cm

SignedLower right: Kernoff 35

Credit LinePurchased, 2025

Object numberNGI.2025.28

DescriptionThis work depicts the Grand Floral Staircase at Bellevue Gardens, near Glengormley in north Belfast. These ‘pleasure’ gardens were laid out between 1911 and 1913 by the Belfast Corporation. In 1933, twelve acres of land, either side of the staircase, were set aside for a zoological collection. The Bellevue Zoo – now known as Belfast Zoo – opened in 1934 and attracted over a quarter of a million visitors in its first year. Kernoff produced an oil painting of a similar subject and exhibited it at the RHA in 1936 under the title A Flight of Steps in a Northern City. In addition to a number of sunny park scenes, Kernoff depicted Belfast’s role in Ireland’s industrialisation of the early twentieth century in his oil Gantries on a Sunday, Belfast (1936) in which the cranes of the Harland and Woolfe shipyard loom over Victoria Park. For Kernoff, leisure is possible due to the work of labourers. Thus, he consistently presents a balance between the two in his practice, and often in the same artwork.
InscriptionLower right: Belleview Steps (100)/Belfast Zoo/Belfast 1935
ProvenanceGodolphin Gallery, Dublin; Beaufield Mews Gallery, Dublin Lot 703; Adam's 2011 sale of the Collection of Jill Cox; Private collection; Purchased, Adam's Important Irish Art Sale 26 March 2025 Lot 57, 2025Exhibition HistoryExhibition of Old and New Paintings by Harry Kernoff, Studio Arts Club, Harcourt Street Dublin, 1942

The Harry Kernoff Memorial Exhibition, The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 14 December 1976 - January 1977