Life
1903-? [var. ffrench-Salkeld]; b. Assam, returned to Ireland with mother
in 1909; studied under Seán Keating at Metropolitan School of Art
(Dublin); later at Kunstakademie, Kassel (Germany), in 1921, aetat. 17,
when he encountered Neue Sachlichkeit movement; exhib. at first Internationale
Kunstausstellung, Dusseldorf, with Leger, Matisse, Boccioni, et al.; returned
to Ireland, 1925; won Taylor Schol. (RDS) with “The Builders”,
1926; contrib. on philosophy of art to Francis Stuart’s short-lived
magazine To-morrow, dropping out after the first issue at the time
of the fracas over Lennox Robinson’s ‘blasphemous’ story1924;
espoused stylised manner from 1935; rejected photographic painting amd
espoused smooth use of colour; contrib. to the Bell in [?1944];
“The Triumph of Bacchus” (otherwise “Morning’ and
‘Noon”) mural at Davy Byrne’s, Duke St. Dublin, 1942;
became Brendan Behan’s father-in-law when the latter married his
dg. Beatrice.
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Notes
Robert Greacen, See also Greacen, Even
Without Irene (1969; rep. 1995), which cites comments Kate O’Brien’s
remarks on Salkeld: ‘He seemed to me to have a contempt for life
- which in man so gifted was especially sad. The invalidism of his later
years was deplorable, but must have been an expression of wounded pride,
a refusal to compete Yet he must be said to have had a good life.’
(p.151; see also under S. B. Kennedy, infra.) See also Greacen, Brief
Encounters (1991): Salkeld lived with his mother Blanaid - a friend
of Ernie O’Malley and others - at 43 Morephampton Rd.; he was a friend
of Flann O’Brien and became a character, Cashel, in At-Swim-Two-Birds.
(23ff.)
S. B. Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism (1991), pp.42-44: Cecil ffrench Salkeld ... father in law of Brendan Behan ... studied art in Kassel, Germany (of Grimm Bros. fame); spent much of his time in bed, reading, writing, and chatting; RHA; his local [pub], Reddin’s of Donnybrook; wrote and produced at the New Theatre a play, A Gay Goodnight, with an amateur company (the title from Yeats, ‘..The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.’). Quotes Kate O’Brien: ‘He was a man of too many gifts - none of them sufficiently strong to control him. ... He seemed to me to have a contempt for life - which in a man so gifted was especially sad. The invalidism of his later years was deplorable, but must have been an expression of wounded pride, a refusal to complete [...]. Yet he must be said to have had a good life.’ (Quoted in S. B. Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism (1991), pp.42-44.)
Yeats’s Tower: Salkeld’s painting
of ‘The Centaur’ was made as an illustration for a rough draft
of the ‘On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac’, in
Yeats’s collection ‘The Tower’, and may be regarded as
a part-inspiration for the finished poem [see Albright, Poems,
1990, note, p.666.]
Willie Yeats: For Salkeld’s fulsome account of Yeats in process of composing the poem, and the poet’s attribution of its final order to the impact of his painting, is copied given in J. M. Hone, W. B. Yeats, p.326-28. (See A. N. Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1984, p.249-50).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)