This early Harry Kernoff (Harcourt Street, Dublin, 1920s) is rather brownish and doesn’t appeal as much as his other work at first, but the longer you look at it the more you see and in the process of seeing it you feel something which you don’t get from more obviously flashy paintings, a sense of having worked for the pleasure you feel in looking at it.
The girl in the yellow dress and red cloche hat on the sunny side of the street is easy to make out, as is the man on the bicycle, or maybe motorcycle, more likely the latter as he appears to be dressed very grandly for a mere cyclist in a cape and hat with earflaps. The horse and cart is a little more difficult to make out and I’m still not sure what’s being carried on the cart, but I hope to decipher that with more time and greater resolution.
Things change as you look at this painting: what appears to be an umbrella turns out, on closer examination, to be a crutch, smart suited cityish gent changing into indigent before your very eyes. The woman on the front left is transparent as a memory of times past, and the other figure behind her, in red and sickly yellow, I can’t make out at all what it is, colourful enough to be a child, but too big for one.
A flashily dressed girl perhaps? Men didn’t dress in red flowing garments like that in the 1920′s, unless they were artists or priests. Or maybe a person from an earlier age, when the street was new and fresh instead of brown and dust-besmirched, and clothes were tighter, shinier and brighter altogether? Why shouldn’t a painting of ghosts have ghosts from different eras?
But would I have taken the trouble to notice all this if it wasn’t for the chimneys? Not a chance. They are the only sunlit things on that side of the street, as is usual when walking down Harcourt Street after mid-afternoon in summer; its evening gloom hasn’t changed in the ninety plus years since this picture was painted and Kernoff captures it perfectly.
I love the chimneys because they remind me of my father. ‘Old Dublin chimneys’, as he used to call them. I know them when I see them because he used to point them out to me so often, but I have never heard them referred to like that by anyone else, the term doesn’t appear on any web page and they don’t seem that different from chimneys of the same vintage in any other city.
But my Dad thought these sort of chimneys were special Dublin ones and throughout my childhood the words ‘old Dublin chimney’, would cure any annoyance, distract him from any misdeed, help procure from him in his abstraction any amount of loose change, but no paper notes; even the depth of distraction caused by the thought of old Dublin chimneys only went so far…
I remember you had to be quick, so quick, to get the cash, because his examination of the particular chimney pointed out to him never lasted very long, most of them being clear interlopers. By the mid-1980′s almost all of the old Dublin chimneys had been taken down and and it would have been nearly impossible to find a full set for a four-pot chimney stack, never mind a whole street like this one.
But he never failed, my father, no matter what he was doing, to get distracted by the thought of what might be, just maybe, perhaps, a real old Dublin chimney, and take a look in hope.
Which is why I love this picture so much.
Yes, it’s quite fun trying to make out the details. Definitely a motorbike, you can see the exhaust smoke. I think the red-and-white figure on the left is actually a little girl in a red dress walking with an adult in white.
Is the 2-wheel cart pulled by a horse, or would it be a donkey? In London that sort of cart was typical of rag-and-bone men.
The red door on the left looks as though it must have some special significance to be picked out like that.
What sort of people lived in this street in the 1920s, and was the side that got the afternnon sun more expensive than the gloomy side?
Well done on the exhaust smoke. Yes the figure in red and white does appear to have four legs. Donkey I think.
The street was mostly flats by the 1920s, I think. Not quite tenements. The kind of place a struggling artist might live…
Yes, an excellent painting, and i love your observations on it. I really like most of the few Harry Kernoff’s work that I’ve seen to date. Such as that well-known painting of the road winding, snaking down the hillside of Howth Head, back towards the village, with a couple of madly bright painted cottages, (which i believe was an accurate observation of them at the time, i understand they really were those colours). As for this one of Harcout St, it’s possibly even better, It’s super, and you’re right about how our understandings change as we read through it back and forth. I’d love to see it in the flesh. Is it in a public collection do you know?
You’re very good Arran, thanks very much. I know the one of Howth, and I love it too. This picture above was up for auction at Whytes recently, but didn’t sell I believe… if you have a spare few quid, contact them – you never know!
hee-hee, thanks, I might do that. I wish! My quids don’t feel quite as numerous or as “spare” as they used to be.. alas! Very nice notion though, this is the sort of painting one could very happily live with.
No doubt your father was referring to what is commonly known as ‘old Dublin chimney pots’ which adorned the roofs of early Victorian houses. They were octagonal in shape and had small recessed vents just under the rim to help keep the fires below burning. I shall send you a photo of a group of such chimneys from the inner city. I just wonder why your father was always looking upwards?
Thank you Salmon. That would be lovely. Yes, it was indeed chimney pots my dad was referring to. I remember this well as I spent a great deal of my childhood going round with him looking for them. Those were the days!
Re looking upwards, I guess my dad must have been an optimist. Well, with us kids he had to be!
…extra points if there’s a brush sticking out…!