“Mass in a Connemara Cabin”, Aloysius O’Kelly, 1883, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
A young priest gives the final blessing at a Station Mass. His vestments are white and there is a picture of the Sacred Heart in the background, which suggests the particular piety of Irish Catholicism. It is the end of the Mass, when the priest faces the people who kneel for the final blessing and dismissal. When Aloysius O’Kelly painted this picture, he was already an established artist. He had trained in Paris, and this painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1884. It was the first painting by an Irish artist to be so honoured. But this image was rooted in the contemporary context of the West of Ireland and in the momentous events unfolding there. At the time both religious and political feelings were running high. The apparitions at Knock took place in August 1879, while near-famine conditions prevailed across the country. In the West of Ireland landlords demanded excessive rents from their tenants. The Land League which was founded in Castlebar in October 1879. In time, this movement would achieve a radical change in the system of land ownership. A key strategy was to hold mass meetings of tenant farmers on Sundays, when people did not work and went to Mass. The meetings took place after Mass, forging links between religious practice and the “Land War.” O’Kelly’s painting is realistic in detail. Details such as the young curate’s top hat and coat, his rosy cheeks, or the cloth of the kneeling woman’s shawl, ring true. It has been commented that the senior Catholic clergy did not wish to alienate the landlord class, and so did not attend the Mass meetings with their flock, but sent their young curates instead. The young priest faces the congregation with a hand raised in blessing. After the blessing he will pronounce the dismissal: “Ita Missa est”. Light from the left suggests the open door through which the congregation would soon leave. In this way what has just happened in the cabin and what will happen outside are both evoked. Both an artist and a Fenian, O’Kelly’s painting is about the harsh reality of tenant farmers’ lives in the West of Ireland at the time. Their faith and their plight are powerfully evoked. It is impossible to ignore the man who kneels to the fore, who is not dressed like the others in his Sunday best, but in his working clothes.
This painting has a special significance for Edinburgh because for many years it was in St Patrick’s in the Cowgate. Thought to be lost, it was identified in 2002 by the parish priest at St Patrick’s. In the 1890’s the Cowgate was home to a great many poor Irish migrants. This painting is on permeant loan to the National Gallery of Ireland. You can read an article in the press about the discovery: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1412078/Rare-painting-found-in-presbytery.html
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