Bill For Brightening Up Hell
Recently I received a number of boxes containing interesting old books and documents pertaining, for the most part, to various subjects on Ireland’s past history, but relating particularly to that twilight zone known to us as the Celtic Dawn, recognised initially by Sir Samuel Ferguson and exemplified in his poem Congal. That dawn was a subject later to be expanded on and embellished by Lady Gregory and to which W.B. Yeats with his curious visions quickly hitched his own bandwagon. Fortunately, this union later produced the Abbey Theatre.

Also among the cache of material was the following newspaper cutting from 1929. Now we all are aware of frustrated artists cutting off their ears, ripping up their canvasses or of the truthful artist, who not making a lady look as beautiful as her husband thinks she is, goes unpaid. However, our story has a different twist.

Under the heading, Renewing Heaven, with a sub-title ‘Bill for Brightening up Hell’, an English newspaper published at Montreux, the Swiss lakeside resort, told an amusing story of a Swiss artist’s humour which made all Switzerland laugh.
Apparently the authorities of a certain old church who employed an artist to renovate a large painting, demurred about paying his bill unless the details were specifically mentioned. Next day they received the detailed bill (French Francs):

For correcting the Ten Commandments,
embellishing Pontius Pilate and putting
new ribbons in his hat . .…… ……………...8
Putting tail on rooster of St. Peter and
mending his comb..…………………….. ……4
Repluming and gilding left wing of
Guardian Angel..………………………….. …6
Washing High Priest’s Servant………………5
Renewing Heaven, adjusting the stars
and cleaning up the Moon……………………7
Brightening up the flames of hell, putting
a new tail on the Devil, mending his hoof
and doing several odd jobs for the damned……………………………………….12
Touching up Purgatory, and restoring lost souls…… ……………………………………...7
Mending the shirt of the Prodigal Son………3

Here too is the eminent archaeologist Professor M.J. O’Kelly with an enlightening essay on his initial excavations of the main tumulus at Newgrange when part of the perimeter of the main structure was stripped, exposing for the first time in 5,000 years the original stonework of the entrance passage to Newgrange.
Among this earthy lot are books on painting and the struggling artist…..of the already well-established Jack Yeats and the emerging Louis Le Brocquy; but thinking back on many and various artists who in former years were very much dependent for income and existence on Church commissions during the last century (they were the only ones with money to pay), supporting for instance the now internationally famous artist Imogen Stuart, who had emigrated to Ireland from devastated Germany after World War 2, and whose wonderfully conceptual (if unkempt) Anna Livia adorns the Square in Ballymore Eustace; or that of the late artist Tommy Ryan (a visionary of the old school) from the woolen factory down by the bridge in Ballymore who supplied commissioned pictures as book-markers, small images of saints in all their glory, complete with halos. He was the complete artist - he once got a commission to paint The Crucifixation and needing some experience of the structural form the body takes under such trauma, and wearing only a loin cloth, he assumed the position at the back of the factory one day, which was why Fr. Brown accused him of holy mockery when he came upon the scene.
Nor must we forget the story doing the rounds of Albert Reynolds when he first entered politics - that inimitable showman, a budding and youthful entrepreneur, selling up-to-date pictures of St. Patrick outside Croke Park on All Ireland day before he made it big in the dog food business.
This hoard of material also contains comment on art of various forms including poetry and plays and in one essay, Michael Smith ponders the serious difficulty the new generation of writers had in escaping from the old Yeatsean form of Irish identity – the creation and construction of a modern idiom reflecting the new progressive Ireland where the hand of censorship gripped tightly; but it was females who initiated the coarse of action and lead the way - as skirts got shorter and shorter, verses of love rose in tempo!
Michael Ward.