Michael Healy 1873–1941: An Túr Gloine’s Pioneer by David Caron (review)

Reviewed by: Michael Healy 1873–1941: An Túr Gloine's Pioneer by David Caron Dr Róisín Kennedy (bio) David Caron, Michael Healy 1873–1941: An Túr Gloine's Pioneer (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2023), 448 pages. Michael Healy was the leading artist associated with the stained glass co-operative, An Túr Gloine, whose magnificent windows in Loughrea Cathedral, Co. Galway, established his reputation as one of Ireland's finest exponents of stained glass. They feature in the glowing posthumous accounts of Healy written by Constantine Curran and Thomas MacGreevy after his early death in 1941. But, apart from these brief essays, there has never been a full evaluation of Healy's oeuvre or his career, until now. As Caron's book reveals, Healy was a prolific artist who made about 100 windows, all for An Túr Gloine, which are located in institutions all over Ireland as well as in England, USA, Canada and New Zealand. Healy is an overlooked figure in the history of Irish art. No substantial body of his correspondence or private papers is extant. The contents of An Túr Gloine, including most of its cartoons, were destroyed in a studio fire in 1958. Surviving archive material in the National Gallery and NIVAL and the papers of Thomas MacGreevy and James Holloway in Trinity College as well as those of the founder of An Túr Gloine, Sarah Purser, in the National Library of Ireland along with various ecclesiastical archives, as well as the windows and drawings of Healy and his co-workers, are meticulously researched to provide a fascinating and detailed account of the artist's life and career. Healy was a private and complex individual, deeply religious but worldly wise also. When the priest criticized his design for a church window in Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary in 1916, Healy noted, 'It's a pity he should get such a good window.' Sarah Purser later revealed to a client that 'Mr Healy is our most interesting and best artist but … rather crusty to deal with.' He disliked any kind of public attention and could be 'reticent and moody'. He came from an impoverished inner city Dublin background, born in a one roomed tenement on Bishop Street. The book uncovers a great deal about Healy's family, his siblings and their lives and reveals his relationship with his landlady, Elizabeth Kelly and the fact that they had a son, Diarmid. Healy rarely travelled abroad except for an extensive period in Florence c. 1899–1900 sponsored by Father Glendon, the editor of the Irish Rosary, and a future patron of An Túr Gloine. This experience had a lasting impact on Healy's work. The medieval mosaics that he saw in the baptistery in Florence [End Page 129] have been traced by Caron as a source for the Christ the King window which was unveiled in Loughrea Cathedral in 1930. Another fascinating connection with Florence is made when Caron notes how the oval face of the Virgin in the Regina Coeli window, also made for Loughrea in 1930, is reminiscent of the work of Amedeo Modigliani, an artist who, like Healy, also studied in the Accademia della Arte in Florence. Healy's design may have been influenced by reproductions of Modigliani's work or the Irish artist may have shared Modigliani's reverence for the purity of medieval and ancient art. Another source for the Regina window was the medieval oak sculpture, the Kilcorban Madonna, then housed in a Dominican priory near Loughrea. Healy was a student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1890s where his exceptional talents at drawing prompted the teacher and noted sculptor John Hughes to recommend him to Purser and as the first recruit to An Túr Gloine. Healy took lessons in stained glass from the English Arts and Crafts expert, A. E. Child, who Caron argues was a much less able or imaginative artist. Healy's Roman Catholic and modest background differed significantly from that of the mainly middle class, Protestant women who dominated the co-operative in which he worked. One of the most intriguing and touching parts of the book refers to the...

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