Harry Kernoff, R.H.A. 1900-1974

The present work depicts Bellevue Park, Belfast. The gardens were created in 1913 by Belfast corporation on a 32 acre site and the design was appropriately Edwardian in fashion with a network of pathways, a floral hall and tea house, and extensive planting.

Maurice MacGonigal, Kernoff's friend and fellow student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, recalled that whilst studying in Dublin, he 'walked the city with Kernoff, who wandered' (in conversation with Theo Snoddy, 1976, quoted in his Irish Artists; 20th Century, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1996, p.234).  The statement perfectly encapsulates the attitude which allowed Kernoff to display such a full appreciation of any city he visited, 'wandering' at his own pace with an eye for detail and experiencing all different levels of society. Here, in A Fortress City, Kernoff immediately draws the viewer into the picture plane through the young girl in the foreground, smartly dressed on her way to school or perhaps to church. Our eye is expertly led into the distance down the cascading stairs, peopled with characters from this city going about their everyday business, oblivious of the moment captured. A flat-capped man hurries up the stairs whilst a young boy is seated, having a cigarette, gazing down to a young woman dressed in vibrant red on the bench below. 

The urn of vibrantly coloured flowers in the foreground with bold red petals perfectly offsets the young woman's dress and is typical of Kernoff's clever documentary style. Its position high up above the stairs not only emphasises the stark architecture of Bellevue Park but also ingeniously sets up a vertical dynamism within the picture plane reinforcing the illusion of great depth down the stairs and into the distance. As John Dowling had observed in 1935, 'shapes are what interest him, such as the mass of a building against the sky or a pattern of roofs and chimney pots' (Ireland To-day, 1935). Moreover, Kernoff cleverly juxtaposes severe angles of old stone architecture, jutting out from the left hand side of the composition, with the modern wooden and chicken wire fence on the right hand side, framing the present-day local characters of Belfast, and all three elements combine to represent the city's past, present and future.