Jack B. Yeats and Mid-Century

Jack Yeats emerges as the central Irish artistic figure of the century, bursting onto the scene in the 1920s with impassioned paintings rich in the use of colour and thick impasto. His Going to Wolfe Tone's Grave of 1929 also marks a new beginning of sorts, a return to internationalism on stylistic terms. His palette is less restrained; the treatment of the paint in deep incisions is expressionistic, in a way that looks to the art of interwar German painters. At the same time, by invoking the memory of a great Irish martyr, it speaks of Irish heroism and the politics of republicanism while distancing itself from the latter's overt political manifestation. Politics here reside in memory rather than in present-day violence. Yeats's expressionist style and interest in Irish politics were an important legacy for Irish painters of the 1980s and '90s.

 Independence came in 1922 in the form of partition, in which the "Fourth Province" of Protestant-dominated Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom. Partition was itself viewed either as insufficient for the more extreme Republicans or equally as a failure of will on the part of extreme Unionists. Divided opinion even in the newly independent Ireland (divided between those who were for or against partition) led to years of civil war as violent as anything that had preceded them. The resolution of the border and acceptance of partition inaugurated a new era, an era with its own parallels in painting, including a new generation of Irish painters experimenting with a variety of international influences often adapted to Irish subjects. Amongst these is Louis le Brocquy, whose early work drew heavily on the radical compositional techniques of Edgar Degas, adapted heavily to Irish settings. Such work was intended to insert progressive Irish painting into the mainstream of international production. Mainie Jellett, one of a number of influential mid-century Irish women artists, must also be seen in this light, and must largely be credited with bringing European Modernism to Ireland. Her particular conception of Modernism saw it as a serious attempt by a new century to create an identity for itself.

Other Irish painting at mid-century responded to the horrors of the Second World War. Mary Swanzy's Message, painted at the height of the conflict, can be read as her personal interpretation of a religious theme—Jesus representing hope in the midst of chaos. The work of Patrick Hennessy derives its power from a sense of postwar angst, combining a flirtation with the unsettling emotional tones of Surrealism, an air of mysticism, and allusions to the continuing brutal legacy of emigration.