Two oils on canvas hang together, strikingly similar, in the first room of the National Gallery of Ireland’s new show. Both titled Composition, they date from 1924 and 1925. They’re cubist still lifes, with the regular, geometric patterns and contrasting colour schemes favoured by many early 20th-century modernists, Marcel Duchamp and Juan Gris among them.
The paintings are clearly by the same hand. Except they’re not. The 1924 work, featuring what might be a fried egg, or might be an easel, is by Evie Hone; the piece from the following year, centred on a chessboard, is by her best friend, Mainie Jellett. These two women, virtually unknown outside their homeland, and not well-known even there, revolutionised art in Ireland by introducing modernism.
