McAuley, Charles Joseph

by Linde Lunney

McAuley, Charles Joseph (1910–99), painter, was born 15 March 1910 in Lubatavish, Glenaan, in the Glens of Antrim, where his family lived on a small farm, youngest child of four boys and four girls born to Bernard McAuley and his wife Lizzie (née McElheron). The family tradition was that his parents had eloped to get married. Bernard McAuley filled out the 1911 census form in Irish, signing himself as Brian Mac Amhalaghaidh. The Gaelic revival had inspired the rediscovery of the last remnants of the Irish language spoken in the Glens of Antrim; a Feis na nGleann was held in Glenariff for the first time in 1904, and from about 1910 a local priest, Fr Domhnal Ó Tuathall, encouraged children and adults to learn Irish from the few remaining native speakers.

The way of life with which Charles was familiar was still very traditional; farms were small, without much mechanisation. Like his siblings, he attended the local national school; some of them left the Glens to study for careers in teaching and in pharmacy, but Charles wanted to stay with the life he knew, and after leaving school worked on the farm. Even as a small child, he was keen on drawing and painting, and in 1929 he entered the Celtic design competition in that year's feis; the judge, a well-known artist, James Humbert Craig (qv), in his adjudication encouraged the teenager to continue to paint. The silver medal awarded in 1929 was one of McAuley's lifelong prized possessions, and Craig's encouragement changed his life. McAuley briefly attended classes in Belfast School of Art (and even more briefly in Glasgow), but found city life uncongenial and the instruction generally unprofitable.

Though practically self-taught, he admired the French impressionists and was influenced by the work of Craig and other local artists like William Conor (qv). Craig had a cottage in Cushendun, and stayed in touch with young McAuley, recommending in 1933 that he submit paintings to the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin for its summer exhibition. Two were accepted, and a few others over the years were hung by the RHA and also by the Ulster Academy of Arts (latterly, the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA)). He started trying to make a living from his painting when he was 28, but despite the lack of support for artistic effort in a rural milieu, chose to work in the Glens, where he felt he belonged, rather than moving to a city. McAuley developed his artistic skills in both watercolour and oils; he concentrated at first on landscapes but also painted a number of portraits, mainly for private commissions. A local reputation began to grow, and as the way of life which McAuley recorded was vanishing, his paintings of farm scenes and seascapes were increasingly popular; they mostly were bought privately, as he seldom held exhibitions. Possibly his international artistic reputation would have been greater if his subject matter had been less local (and perhaps if he had been less prolific in his later career); at any rate, metropolitan-based art critics were inclined to look down on the work as being insufficiently avant-garde and even provincial, and twentieth-century academic surveys of Irish art seldom include an entry on McAuley. However, by the end of his career McAuley was acknowledged as 'the artist of the Glens', and his paintings increasingly commanded large sums, and were bought for local museums and galleries. His typical subject matter and the characteristic composition of many of his paintings, as well as his relatively successful treatment of light and clouds, make his works recognisable to anyone interested in Northern Irish art.

A volume produced by the Glens of Antrim Historical Society, The day of the corncrake (1984), consolidated McAuley's local reputation. Twenty-five of his paintings, mostly from his earlier career, were reproduced to accompany thirty poems by John Hewitt (qv). In an introduction, Hewitt described McAuley as 'the authentic regional artist, the painter who belongs to and finds his themes in a known place'. He was elected a member of the RUA and was an associate of the Royal College of Art. Local television and radio featured McAuley and his work, and though shy and almost reclusive in old age, he was a very well-known figure round his home in the village of Cushendall. He married Margaret ('Peggy') O'Loan in Cushendall in 1940. Charles McAuley died on 30 September 1999, survived by his daughter and three sons. A nephew, Tony McAuley (qv), produced radio and television programmes featuring traditional music, and a niece, Roisin McAuley, was a BBC broadcaster and producer and later a successful novelist. Charles McAuley's granddaughter, Clodagh Murphy, is an artist.