WHYTE'S in association with CHRISTIE'S - The Ernie O'Malley Collection MONDAY 25 November 2019

9 THE ERNIE O’MALLEY COLLECTION · 25 NOVEMBER 2019 AT 6PM though he favoured representational form rather than abstraction. He liked the painterly quality and the expressive impasto of Maurice Vlaminck and Jack B. Yeats. Ernie returned reluctantly to University College Dublin (UCD) to resume medical studies in autumn 1926. During his walk about Europe, he read extensively on modern drama. He and his friends William Fay, Denis Devlin, Roger McHugh, decided to form the Dramatic Society at UCD. The Society (DramSoc) produced modern European plays in contrast to the Abbey Theatre’s Irish productions. By 1927 even UCD President Denis Coffey accepted there was a need for such a group. However, after Ernie’s departure, the collective powers restricted the modern influence to which students should have been exposed. Ernie was an abstentionist Sinn Féin TD (member of the Dáil, the Irish Free State parliament). He refused to take his seat and actually avoided politics entirely. He disagreed with the new state’s attitude towards the arts. In January 1927, he wrote his ‘San Mareno Letters’ which compared Ireland to San Marino and alluded to the cynical manner in which the current Irish politicians were handling the arts. Ernie did not do well when he retook his medical exams in the summer of 1928. He was glad to accept an invitation to go to the United States to raise funds to establish Eamon de Valera’s newspaper, The Irish Press. He, along with fellow anti-Treaty general, Frank Aiken, headed to New York in October. Here Ernie experienced a whole new world, one away from the encrustations of conservative Irish politics, church, society and artistic norms. He later wrote America ‘helped me to live my life apart from all the associative memories that intrude too much at home; its impersonality and detachment have helped me to find something of myself.’ 5 It was here that Ernie found the space he needed to write his own memoir on his life through his release from jail in 1924. To start this process, he undertook significant research using the resources of the New York Public Library for Irish newspapers and general reading in Irish history, literature, folklore, language, poetry and archaeology. When starting his West Coast travels in March 1929, Ernie articulated his life’s future direction: ‘My soul lies with the arts. In them lies happiness. I hope to be able to restore Ireland’s interest in them.’ He corresponded with Grace V Kelly, painter and art critic, of Ohio about good books to read on art. By the time he got to San Francisco, he knew what company he wished to keep: the intellectual and artistic community. While in California, he enjoyed meeting people in the arts including modern muralist Raymond Boynton, poet Robinson Jeffers, craftsman Preston McCresson, patron of modern art, Irishman Albert Bender and photographer EdwardWeston. While there he received works by Boynton andWeston, as well as photographs of contemporary California. In September 1929, Ernie arrived at the artistic community of Taos, New Mexico. At the home of Mabel Dodge Luhan he finally met the Irish poet, mystic and mythologist Ella Young. In Taos, Ernie met many people in the arts: James ‘Spud’ Johnson, Dorothy Brett, Ernest and Mary Blumenschein, Mary Hamlin and Nicolai Fechin. Ernie supported himself by house- sitting and doing odd jobs thus enabling him to work on his memoir and read. Toni Lujan, the Native American husband of Mabel Luhan, introduced him to members of his Taos tribe. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s house by “R.E.J.” From The Collection of Ernie O’Malley.