Featured Artists & Gallery News

Walter  Osborne  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1859,  the  son  of  a  well  known  animal  painter,  William  Osborne  (1823  -  1901).  He  studied  at  the  Royal  Hibernian  Academy  Schools  in  Dublin  and  at  the  Dublin  Metropolitan  School  of  Art.  In  1881  he  won  the  Taylor  scholarship  at  the  Royal  Dublin  Society,  which  allowed  him  to  travel  to  Antwerp.  There  he  enrolled  at  the  Academie  Royale  des  Beaux  Arts  and  joined  the  Natuur  (painting  and  drawing  from  life)  class  given  by  the  animal  painter  Charles  Verlat  (1824  -  1890).  In 1883 having completed his  training,  Osborne  travelled  to  Brittany,  by  then  a  popular  destination  for  painters  wishing  to  paint  en  plein  air.  Osborne worked in the countryside around the towns of  Pont  Aven,  Dinan  and  Quimperle.  One of his best known paintings from this period is his famous Apple Gathering, Quimperlé, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. During this time he became  friendly  with  many  artists  and  was  influenced  especially  by  Jules  Bastien  -  Lepage,  the  French  painter  who  used  a  grey,  even  light  in  his  paintings,  and  promoted  the  square  brush  technique,  a technique where paint is laid down in blocks of colour with a flat square brush.  Osborne  was  also  influenced  in  his  work  by  two  English plein air painters, George Clausen and Stanhope Forbes.

On  his  return  from  France  in  1884,  Osborne  spent  most  of  the  next  few  years  in  various  small  English  towns.  In  England  he  worked  with  Nathaniel  Hill  and  Edward  Stott  in  Worcestershire.  He  worked  in  the  open  air  continuing  to  paint  the  rural  scenes,  villages  and  cottage  gardens  that  he  had  painted  on  the  Continent.  He  spent  the  winter  months  in  Ireland  and  showed  annually  at  the   Royal  Hibernian  Academy  exhibition,  where  he  also  became  an  influential  teacher.  In  1883  he  was  elected  an  associate  of  the  RHA  and  in  1886  he  became  a  full  member.  He  then  settled  in  Dublin  where  he  assumed  responsibility  for  the  upbringing  of  his  niece,  Violet  Osborne,  who  on  the  death  of  her  mother  in  childbirth  was  sent  from  Canada  to  Ireland  to  be  reared  by  her  grandparents.   He  continued  to  paint  outdoors  in  and  around  Dublin,  but  these  works  proved  difficult  to  sell  and  so  he  entered  the  more  lucrative  area  of  portrait  painting,  where  he  was  very  successful.  He  continued  to  exhibit  at  the  RHA  and  at  the  Royal  Academy  exhibitions  in  London,  where  his  work  was  always popular.  His  later  works  show  an  "impressionistic"  influence  where  his  usual  dark  tonality  gave  way  to  brighter colours  and an  increased  interest  in  the  effects  of  sunlight and shadows.
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In  1900  for  reasons  unknown  he  refused  the  offer  of  a  knighthood.  His  career  ended  quite  tragically  in  1903,  when  aged  only  forty  four,  he  died  of  pneumonia.  It  is  with  some  justification  that  his unsentimental  atmospheric  paintings  with  their  popular  charm  earned  him  the  title  of  "the Irish Impressionist".

We have just returned from this years Irish Antique Dealers' Fair at the R.D.S. Dublin, where we showcased over eighty paintings, and thirty five bronze sculptures on our stand, laid out in a room setting furnished with selected antique furniture, Daum glass vases and antique lamps. The antiques fair is always a wonderful opportunity to see Ireland's leading antique dealers all under one roof, and this year the fair was officially opened by Carleton Varney, President of Dorothy Draper & Co. who is a world renowned decorator, designer & author. His client list is second to none and features major Hollywood icons, such as Fay Wray, Joan Crawford, Van Johnson & Ethel Merman.

​Alexey Krasnovsky, one of Jorgensen Gallery’s longest standing artists, sadly passed away recently in Dublin, a place that had been his home for the past twenty-five years.
 
Born in Russia in 1945, he studied painting in St. Petersburg at the Tavrichesky College of Art under the constructivist painter Alexander Pavlovitch Zaitev. In 1979 Alexey left Russia and emigrated to the United States, where he first lived in New York city before moving to Woodstock, New York. During this time he travelled extensively throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe, before finally moving to Ireland.

​Alexey had numerous successful solo exhibitions at Jorgensen Fine Art, as the gallery was previously known, his last being in 2014.

​Below is the catalogue introduction from that exhibition, written by Sile Connaughton Deeny.
                                 
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
 
W.B. YEATS
 
Colour, which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power… PAUL GAUGUIN
 
Colour is the language of this exhibition, at times the voice is loud and vibrant, the colour thickly and defiantly applied. At others it is sotto voce the colours pared-back and almost withheld. There is a divide between the earthly and the ethereal, the sensual and the spiritual. We are reminded of the raw sexuality of the work of Gauguin juxtaposed with the tender innocence of that of van Gogh. The earthiness of Billy’s Bay Jamaica, Hot Peppers and Still Life with White Onion is almost tangible. We smell the soil which nourishes the Chestnut Clarinda Park. As for Flying Squirrel and Cardinal Red, I think Gauguin would have been hard-pressed to convey such relish in Nature’s fecundity. In total contrast, the lighter, airier, more dreamlike works such as Gibbous Moon, Tavira Portugal, Conversation Collioures and, perhaps most especially, Moorish Castle Tavira are heartbreakingly tender and touching. They are the dreams that Yeats speaks of in his poem.
 
These works are laced with Alexey’s life experiences; he is in every brushstroke, every trope. He openly parades his emotions, cracking open the carapace to expose to us the tenderloin of his inner self. It truly behoves us to ‘tread softly’.
 
                                                                                                Síle Connaughton-Deeny, May 2014

Ib Jorgensen, one of Ireland’s top fashion designers, originally founded Jorgensen Fine Art in 1992 in his fashion salon housed in an elegant Georgian building on Molesworth Street in Dublin city centre. Jorgensen Fine Art quickly established a reputation as one of the leading art galleries in Dublin, with on average ten exhibitions per year featuring paintings by the leading names of 20th century Irish art, in addition to paintings and sculpture by contemporary Irish and international artists. Since then, the gallery moved premises a number of times, but we have now returned to Molesworth Street, where the original business was started and re-opened as the Jorgensen Gallery.

Jorgensen Gallery is a salon style gallery, specializing in contemporary art with paintings and  bronze sculpture from Irish & International artists displayed in a room setting elegantly furnished with selected antique furniture, lamps and vases.

​The gallery also stocks 19th/20th century paintings by some of the leading Irish and English Artists of that period. We currently have an exquisite watercolour by Irish Impressionist painter Walter Osborne on show and you can read more about it on our gallery blog here walter-osborne-rha-1859-1903-an-irish-impressionist-painter.html​

20th Century Irish Art is represented at the Jorgensen Gallery with paintings by George Campbell, Arthur Armstrong and Evie Hone, which are displayed alongside paintings by our contemporary gallery artists such as Mark Cullen, Sean McSweeney, Clement McAleer, Allan Madsen, Alexey Krasnovsky, Dale Pring MacSweeney, Caroline Canning and Tim Woolcock. Contemporary bronze and stone sculpture also features prominently at the gallery with pieces by Fiona Smith, Vadim Tuzov, James Horan, Kevin Gaines, Joe Moran, Anna Campbell, Donnacha Treacy, Katherine Greene, Michael Keane & Peter Killeen.

Danish by birth, the well-travelled Allan Madsen now lives and works in the Spanish province of Murcia. His first artistic incarnation was as a musician specialising in lute music of the Renaissance. These two interests, music and the Renaissance, have certainly crossed over into his paintings. The patterning in the backgrounds of his still life paintings betrays a decided musicality whilst the texture he achieves is redolent of Italian murals. Giotto comes to mind when one studies the rich texture which is built up by the use of colour. Because of Allan’s use of pentimenti, it is as though one is in the Arena Chapel in Padua looking at the underpainting coming through due to the natural patination of age.