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Hilary Heron

Clonfinloch

1961, welded bronze, 155 centimeters, Fáilte Ireland,

photo courtesy of Fáilte Ireland

hilary heron (1923–1977) was at the forefront of avant-garde art in post–World War II Ireland and was the first Irish sculptor to exhibit work made of welded metals, the medium of ambitious modern sculpture. When she began her practice in the mid-twentieth century, a time when Ireland was dominated by figurative church and commemorative sculpture, modern art had a difficult acceptance; however, Heron would play an important role in bringing about a change in the public's attitude.

Heron's Clonfinloch was commissioned by modern Irish architect Robin Walker (1924–1991) to adorn the entrance to his newly designed Miesian-style Irish Tourism head office on Dublin's Baggot Street in 1961. Reflective of the Irish government's increasing ambitions to be viewed as worldly and progressive, with tourism and travel considered key to manifesting its aims, Walker's and Heron's innovative design evoked a sense of the country's internationality. Walker believed that "works of art fit together to express visually and intellectually a harmonious reflection of our society and its age."¹ However, like many contemporary artists, Heron looked to the past for inspiration, and for this piece she reappropriated the Bronze Age markings on the Clonfinlough Stone, located near Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, and reimagined them as isolated three-dimensional abstractions.

The original carved limestone is a striking example of early Irish lithic art. The adjacent Clonmacnoise monastery was built in the sixth century, but settlement at Clonfinlough is dated to the Bronze Age (2500–500 bce). Interpretations of the markings include the suggestion that they represent a battle. The Clonfinlough Stone has engaged historians for centuries. George Victor Du Noyer (1817–1869) antiquarian, geologist, and artist, published his illustrations of the stone in the 1860s, and its location was noted on earlier maps.

Looking to the markings on the stone, Heron's work is an example of the pervasive interest in precolonial sculpture among Irish modern artists, including Louis le Brocquy (1916–2012), Nano Reid (1900–1981), and Gerard Dillon (1916–1971). Artists were drawn to the universality of ancient abstracted forms, and while these forms provided a tangible link across Irish culture, they also offered avenues for subjective interpretations that resonated with the international modernist age. Heron's abstract, asymmetrical, animate-like forms provided a countering yet balanced organic presence in Walker's pristine, geometric Miesian foyer. The conflation of the ancient and the modern, the subjective and the industrial, showcased Ireland as a guardian of its past and a place of innovation and creativity that engaged with the wider world. Also, significantly, collaborations between Walker, Heron, and the Irish government, alongside other projects, would help to establish and promote modern art and design more broadly across the country.

A pioneering modernist Irish sculptor, Heron trained in the National College of Art and exhibited and traveled widely, including spending most of 1948 in Paris, where she first encountered welded sculpture in the work of Julio González (1876–1942), Alexander Calder (1898–1976), and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). She became proficient in welding, creating her first examples in the medium in the early 1950s. Welding allowed Heron to work in metal at a time when casting was not readily available in Dublin, and she found the technique gave her greater freedom to improvise. However, Heron gained access to bronze casting when in 1958 she moved to London, where she shared a studio with the well-known English sculptor Elisabeth Frink (1930–1993). Clonfinloch, made shortly after Heron's return to Dublin in 1961, was created by casting individual bronze elements and then welding them together. The piece was displayed at that year's Irish Exhibition of Living Art, the most important platform for contemporary art in the country at that time. Clonfinloch was also borrowed for the New York World's Fair (1964–65) to "embellish" and to attest Ireland's modernist credentials at the country's exhibit, designed and curated by architect Andrew Devane (1917–2000...