A count in arrears – Frank McNally on a first-ever solo exhibition of the life and work of Casimir Markievicz

Irish Times

23-04-2025

Casimir Markievicz (1874–1932) was an example of that rare 20th-century phenomenon: a man who came to be completely overshadowed by his wife, even though for most of their lives together they did much the same thing.
His uncertain place in the national memory was unwittingly summed up back in 2013, by a protester at a distressed properties auction on Dublin.
'Ninety-seven years ago, people lost their lives in that park over there [St Stephen's Green},' a spokesman for the New Land League told RTÉ, in a voice tinged with patriotic fervour. He continued: 'Constant Markievicz gave up his life to enable us to eradicate suppression, taxation, eviction, criminality.'
That was an extreme example of the extent to which the male Markievicz's identity had been subjugated to that of his wife Constance (who did indeed participate in the fighting at Stephen's Green in 1916, although like her husband, she lived for more than a decade afterwards and died peacefully in her bed).
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But a new exhibition in Dublin Castle – Casimir Markievicz: A Polish Artist in Bohemian Dublin (1903–1913) – may help clear up any lingering confusion. Jointly hosted by the Polish Embassy and the Office of Public Works, it is billed as 'the first ever solo exhibition of Casimir's works', even if, inevitably, Constance plays a big part too.
One of the show's most impressive pictures is his full-length portrait of her, painted in Paris where they both studied art, in 1899. She's wearing a long white dress and has a gold ring on the middle finger of her left hand. As the exhibition notes point out, however, this was a symbolic ring, denoting her marriage to art, not to the man painting her.
She married him too a year later, still in Paris, where he had started calling himself a 'count' (with dubious entitlement), an ennoblement she now shared.
There was nothing revolutionary about their lives then. Maud Gonne, who also lived in Paris in 1890s but didn't meet Constance there, would later recall pointedly that while she was helping evicted tenants and organising the 1798 centenary, the future countess was enjoying a carefree life at the Académie Julian.
The lack of care continued during the couple's early years in Dublin where they became known for their Bohemian lifestyle but comfortably straddled the social and political divides.
Dublin Castle is an apt venue for the exhibition in more ways than one, because it helped support the artist in life too. Another of the show's bigger painting depicts the 1905 investiture there of the Earl of Mayo as a Knight of St Patrick, with the massed Irish aristocracy gathered in regalia, a prestigious commission for the count.
But the exhibition also adjoins a room in the State apartments where, as visitors are today reminded, James Connolly stayed as a wounded prisoner before his execution. Connolly had been influential in turning Constance Markievicz into a socialist, while she in turn had helped convert him to nationalism.
By 1908, the count and countess – both descended from ancien regimes, he via an old Polish family in what today is Ukraine, she via the Gore-Booths of Sligo's Lisadell House – were starting to go different ways.
He didn't share her growing radicalisation, although he was prone to most of the enthusiasms of nationalist Ireland then, including theatre. Many of those who would later stage the Easter Rising had first staged, written, or acted in plays.
Casimir Markievicz caught that bug too. Reviewing one of his works in 1908, The Irish Times marvelled that 'the microbe of drama has infected nearly everybody in Dublin' and likened it to an 'influenza epidemic'.
The count's infection was not a complete artistic success. WB Yeats – no admirer of him in general – suggested his plays were the work of a man who struggled with English. But Markievicz never recovered from the bug and continued to work in theatre long after his return to Poland.
Back in 1902, previewing the couple's arrival from Paris, George Russell told his friend, stained-glass artist Sarah Purser (in a quotation now writ large on one of the exhibition walls): 'The Gore-Booth girl who is married to the Polish Count with the unspellable name is going to settle near Dublin about summertime. As they are both clever it will help to create an art atmosphere. We might get the materials for a revolt, a new Irish Art Club. I feel some desperate schism of earthquaking revolution is required to wake Dublin up in matters.'
Casimir Markievicz became a prominent figure (literally – he stood 6 feet 4 inches) in Dublin's social and artistic life for a decade. He and the 'Gore-Booth girl' certainly added to the city's creative atmosphere in those years.
And they did indeed help establish the United Arts Club in 1907. A caricature by Beatrice Elvery, also included in the show, features a giant Casimir acting as club bouncer, dwarfing everyone else in the picture.
But in 1913, by then amicably separated from Constance, he left Dublin never to return. This free exhibition at the castle's staterooms is a long overdue retrospective of his Irish years. It opens officially on Thursday and continues until mid-September.