The Irish Jewish artist Harry Kernoff (1900-74) is remembered as a chronicler of mid-twentieth century Dublin, in particular, but also for his fantastic woodcuts, which often focused on the extraordinary “ordinary” people of Ireland, from fishermen in the west to the unemployed of the interwar period. An independent socialist who visited the USSR in late 1930, his best-known woodcut is probably that of James Connolly wearing an Irish Citizen Army uniform with the ITGWU’s Liberty Hall in the background (though there are variations of this image). Kernoff was connected to Dublin’s socialist and bohemian circles from the late 1920s and he drew portraits from life of many key figures.

Recently, at an art auction in Dublin, I purchased a remarkable pastel portrait by Kernoff, which was titled “Portrait of a Gentleman”, presumably because the identity of the sitter

 

had been lost or forgotten. A bit of digging revealed that the portrait had been sold under the same title by another auctioneer in March 2020, while a note tacked to the back indicated that it had been authenticated in 2017 by a highly respected Irish portrait artist as a Kernoff – it is, in fact, signed faintly by Kernoff – but the subject was not identified. Apparently, whoever had brought it for authentication in 2017 was unsure about the artist, never mind the subject.

My instinct, gazing at the intense figure with the nicotine-stained finger, was that this was possibly an IRA veteran or someone with a military background. The subject has a certain military bearing, accentuated by the clipped moustache and even by the manner in which he holds his cigarette. He does not look like a typical bohemian or Dublin writer or artist of the period. I decided to see if I could identify the subject, albeit with limited hope of success because Harry Kernoff had drawn and painted many portraits over the decades and not all were of familiar figures. Nonetheless, I did have a useful starting point.

In December 1966, the then aging Kernoff had tried to sell his collection of portraits to the National Gallery of Ireland in order to keep them together as a group, but probably also in the interests of making a few quid. The prospects were promising initially and an offer was tentatively made by the Director of the National Gallery. Sadly, and shamefully, the board took a different view and by 1970, Kernoff finally came to the obvious conclusion that he would have to sell them off one by one. The owner of the Bailey bar offered to buy five, which wasn’t a bad start. At any rate, during his correspondence with the National Gallery, Kernoff supplied the Director with a list of some 42 extant portraits that he still had in his Stamer Street studio. This document, now in the Gallery archives, is clearly not a comprehensive list of every portrait done by Kernoff, but it did give me something to work with, as I knew that all of these artworks still survived as late as 1970. Consequently, I decided to examine the list and narrow it down to plausible suspects.

Most of the subjects named could be immediately discounted – it wasn’t, say, Hilton Edwards (1928), Peadar O’Donnell (1934), Patrick Kavanagh (1944), Brian O’Nolan (1960) or Cyril Cusack (1942). In the end, 32 very well-known figures could be instantly eliminated. This narrowed the possibilities considerably. I wondered about Frank O’Connor (1950s) for a brief moment before realising that the resemblance went no further than the moustache. A few names were not known to me, but I dismissed them after digging out photographs of the people in question. However, while making my way through the list, I noticed that Kernoff had included a portrait of Captain Jack White, drawn in 1930. This was a surprise. I hadn’t expected to see White named and, even before I dug out contemporaneous photographs, I knew he was a proper possibility. Kernoff had drawn his portrait in the same year that White had published his autobiography, titled Misfit, but he would have known him also from radical left circles in Dublin.

Captain James Robert White DSO (1879-1946), known as “Jack”, a former British army officer, was a key founder of the Irish Citizen Army and its military leader during its early years. Despite coming from a wealthy, establishment background in County Antrim, he became a republican, anarchist, social radical and, in general, a very interesting fellow. Leo Keohane has written a terrific biography that traces White’s political activities and depicts him as a determinedly independent radical activist.

So, is my portrait that drawn by Kernoff of Jack White In 1930?

An examination of a photograph of White from circa 1930 (shown here) certainly led me to think so. Apart from the intense look (White was known to anger quickly), the physical similarities are transparent. We can see precisely the same jawline, the same chin, the same nose. My first impression was, yes, this certainly could be him. The age of the subject is definitely right for White in 1930 when he sat for Kernoff.

Unhelpfully, however, White was only ever photographed in black and white, and almost invariably wearing a hat. So, despite the photographic likeness, my reluctance to positively identify the subject of the portrait as Jack White remained initially because – possibly like everyone else – I had always assumed that White was dark-haired. To get a proper impression of White, I needed to go beyond the photographic artefacts and look for contemporary descriptions.

The portrait showed a man with light-red hair and strikingly blue eyes, so my first step was to ascertain if White had such attributes. I found that he did. Indeed, in the end, pretty much everything confirmed my first impression.

I will break this down, starting with the hair.

    YELLOW/RED HAIR

Black and white photos are a curse, They can mislead. I still find it difficult to visualise Captain Jack White with light-red hair, but it turns out that this was the reality and it appears that we need to re-imagine him.

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure that I would ever find direct references to his hair colour, but I was wrong in my pessimism. Within minutes of pulling my copy of Leo Keohane’s biography from a shelf, I came across the following description from about 1914 on page 157, by one George Berkeley. Emphasis (with caps) is mine:

“Captain White … was a man who would have been an exceptional and striking figure in any assemblage at that time. He was six foot two or more; strong; of the Orange man type … YELLOW HAIR and a pale skin.”

Additional evidence apropos White’s hair colour comes from the English novelist D.H. Lawrence, who knew White personally around 1917 and had a falling out with him; allegedly, White punched Lawrence in the stomach after someone flirted with someone’s wife. Lawrence exacted revenge by rather unsympathetically deploying White as a character – called Jim BrIcknell – in his novel Aaron’s Rod (1922). Here is part of his description of White/Bricknell:

“Jim Bricknell himself was a big tall fellow of thirty-eight … His small moustache was REDDISH.”

    BALDING HEAD

The subject of Kernoff’s portrait has a receding hairline. This also fits with White who was bald up the centre by his 60s, just like his father. Again, we have this description from D.H. Lawrence of Jim Bricknell (or White around 1917): “His young forehead was bald”.

Writing in the Irish Times in December 1953, Denis Ireland remembered White visiting his house in Belfast in the early 1930s and that he still seemed to bear the marks on his head of “being bashed by authority“ (White was severely batoned by police on more than one occasion): “I remember gazing with awe at that celebrated skull and imagining that in the light of the chandelier it had a curious serrated appearance under his sparse hair.”

White generally wore a hat in photographs.

    BLUE EYES AND ELFIN LOOK

The subject in the portrait has clear blue eyes. We have this description of Jack White by the writer Padraig Colum from circa 1913-14:

”Captain White with his military carriage had bright blue eyes that danced in his moments of elation or exaltation, giving him a curiously elfin look.”

The reference here to White’s “curiously elfin look” is also relevant, as Kernoff has clearly caught this attribute in his portrait. D.H. Lawrence refers to White/Bricknell as wanting “to get fat – that was his idea. But he couldn’t bring it off: he was thin, though not too thin, except to his own thinking.”

    CIGARETTE

The cigarette held by the subject is central to the portrait. Kernoff made sure to include it. Did White smoke cigarettes? Here is Lawrence on White/Bricknell:

”Behind him a round table was covered with cigarettes, sweets and bottles. It was evident that Jim Bricknell drank beer for choice.”

Leo Keohane in his biography of White likewise mentions him smoking a cigarette half an hour before he died from cancer in 1946 (page 242).

    THE BUILD AND THE CLOTHES

Another obvious similarity is the build. The figure in the portrait is broad-shouldered and the hand shown is a strong one. This chimes with White. The deportment is also White.

Moreover, look at the jacket. There are two photos available of White from circa 1930 and the jacket he is wearing has the same shoulder seam, lapel notches and gaping top pocket as those shown in the portrait. The tie, and the way it is knotted, is much like the tie White is seen wearing in the photo on the frontispiece of Misfit (1930).

    KERNOFF’S JACK WHITE PORTRAIT FROM 1930

In his note to the Director of the National Gallery, Harry Kernoff listed a 1930 portrait of White, but what became of it afterwards?

In truth, we don’t know right now.

Kernoff sold off several of his portraits before he died in 1974, but was the White pastel among these, or was it sold later by his surviving sister? The only reference I could find was to a pastel portrait of “Captain Jack White” by Kernoff sold at auction by de Veres of Dublin for £400 in March 1995. Unfortunately, the good folks at de Veres were unable to help with regard to this sale. Art auction catalogues at that time depicted a small selection of images and not all of the lots, and de Veres confirmed that an image of the Kernoff item was not included. They were unable to reveal the vendor or purchaser – company policy … but, also, their records from that time no longer exist. It was 30 years ago.

So, is this portrait the Kernoff lot auctioned by de Veres in 1995? Perhaps. For instance, it is possible that the owner passed away and the portrait came into the possession of someone who knew nothing about it, had it authenticated in 2017 as a Kernoff, and later sold it on as “Portrait of a Gentleman”. This would not be an anomalous occurrence. For example, in March 2016, a conté on paper portrait by Kernoff was auctioned in Dublin under the title “Portrait of a Gentleman”, with a note suggesting that the subject might be the writer Austin Clarke. In fact, the sitter was the trade unionist and left-republican Cathal O’Shannon. We know this because there exists an identical portrait in charcoal by Kernoff in which the subject is explicitly identified as O’Shannon and it is dated 1931. Whoever sold the conté version was clearly unaware of the charcoal drawing. And this is how subject identities are lost. Cathal O’Shannon, like White, is not a hugely well-known historical figure.

Importantly, Harry Kernoff often did additional versions of his portraits. There exists at least four versions, for example, of his portrait of Brendan Behan and, similarly, more than two of Flann O’Brien. It is entirely likely that he completed more than one version of his 1930 portrait of White.

In short, everything points to the Kernoff portrait here being of Captain Jack White … but while it might be the Jack White pastel portrait auctioned by de Veres in 1995, it could equally be an alternative version by Kernoff. The research on that issue will have to continue.

- Fintan Lane

[NOTE: If anyone has seen the Kernoff portrait of Captain Jack White sold in 1995, is aware of where it went, or has any useful additional information, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please do contact me at fintanlane@gmail.com ]