In conjunction with The Klesch Collection’s sponsorship of the National Gallery of Ireland’s exhibition ‘Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship’, this Spotlight explores the enduring line that connects art and artists throughout time, establishing dialogues across centuries and countries. This exhibition showcases the groundbreaking work of the two women who brought modernist painting to Ireland. Confronted with the powerful works created by Jellett and Hone, a dialogue can be established with works from The Klesch Collection. In particular, the religious undertones in their art resonate with the High Renaissance paintings by Lorenzo di Credi (c. 1459–1537) and Joos van Cleve (1485–1541) in The Klesch Collection, revealing that art is a universal language — capable of transcending the boundaries of geography and historical moments — and showing how these women reinterpreted visual themes once canonised by the Old Masters.

When Evie Hone (1894–1955) and Mainie Jellett (1897–1944) met at the Westminster School of Art in London in 1917, few could have predicted the lasting impact of their friendship. In pursuit of modernist training, they moved to Paris to study with Cubist painters André Lhote (1885–1962) and, most notably, Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). Under Gleizes’ guidance, Jellett and Hone transformed from academic figurative painters into radical modernists. Their abstract style debuted in Ireland in 1923–24, first through Jellett’s Decoration (1923) (fig. 1), followed by their only joint exhibition in 1924. While praised in Paris, their work was not warmly received by conservative Dublin critics, who labelled it ‘freak pictures’ and ‘artistic malaria’. Jellett persevered, exhibiting internationally and mentoring younger artists. Hone, more shaken by the hostility, retreated to a convent in Cornwall. It was Jellett who convinced her to return to the artistic stage, even collecting her from the convent herself. Hone reconnected with Gleizes and held her first solo show in 1928. By the 1930s, both artists moved away from pure abstraction. Hone turned to figurative stained glass, joining the pioneering An Túr Gloine studio in Dublin. Her work was met with great success, and she received many prestigious commissions including the east window of Eton College Chapel (1948–52) (fig. 2). Jellett also returned to representative art, blending realist and Cubist influences. Together, armed with admirable tenacity, an unshakeable sense of purpose and, above all, sheer talent, these women reshaped the Irish art world. Defying chauvinism and institutional conservatism, they ultimately won the admiration of even their harshest critics, leaving behind powerful legacies as creators and, in Jellett’s case, as a teacher.¹

Both Jellett and Hone were deeply religious, with faith being not only personal, but integral to their artistic work. They drew inspiration from the spiritual themes of Medieval and early Renaissance art, and also from its formal and material qualities.² Like earlier artists, they sought to communicate a spiritual message, but chose to do it through abstraction, the use of forms distilled to their essence. The result is a new form of art that is just as moving as the earlier works that inspired it and invites a timeless question: how can art inspire awe and reverence? Jellett’s Decoration (1923), arguably the most significant modernist painting in the history of Irish art, exemplifies this approach. At once decisively modern and rooted in religious art from the past, the painting is undeniably abstract, while the gold leaf halo and the wood panel itself clearly evoke the form of an early tabernacle. The simplified forms hint at the Madonna and Child, imbuing the composition with a quiet but unmistakable devotional presence.³ Jellett and Hone sought not to abandon tradition, but to reinterpret it.

While Jellet and Hone’s modern response was accused early on of being devoid of meaning, their work spoke a new visual language, distinctly their own and in keeping with the times — one that Irish audiences had to learn to read. Eventually, they did. In 1941, a critic with the Dublin Leader praised Jellett as ‘a spiritual painter […] full of reverence and feeling’.⁵ Similarly, Hone’s stained-glass windows were celebrated for their quiet, expressive power: ‘for all their gentleness they speak aloud of God, prophets of His Greatness and evangelists of His mercy’.⁶ The conviction that eternal truths must be expressed in a language of one’s own time lay at the heart of what Jellett and Hone championed throughout their careers.⁷ Though artists across the ages have differed in approach, method and medium, their goal has remained the same: to give visual form to these eternal truths, inspiring awe and transcendence. Ultimately, art conquers space and time, its message and its power enduring through the generations.