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WHO DO I
THINK I AM?
In Memory of
James White (1913–2003)
Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, 1964–80
&
Terence de Vere White (1912–94)
A Governor & Guardian of the National Gallery of
Ireland, 1955–90
WHO DO I
THINK I AM?
A Memoir
HOMAN POTTERTON
First published in 2017 by
Merrion Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© 2017, Homan Potterton
9781785371509 (Cloth)
9781785371479 (Kindle)
9781785371486 (Epub)
9781785371493 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Design by Sin É Design
Typeset in Minion 11.5pt
Jacket front: Andrew Festing (b. 1941), Portrait of Homan Potterton in the director’s office of the National Gallery of Ireland, 1986. Exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London, 1987. Oil on canvas, 90 x 110 cm. (Author’s Collection, © The Artist, 1986. Photo: Roy Hewson.)
Jacket back: Thomas Ryan, PRHA (b. 1929), cartoon: Farewell, or The Going of Homan: a Tragedy. Signed and dated: ‘Thomas Ryan 9 June 1988’. The Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery lament the departure of their Director. The one female member of the Board is Ann Reihill. (Author’s Collection.)
Contents
1‘Where There’s Grass, There’s No Brains’
3The College of the Holy and Undivided
4Friendships and Foreign Parts
9Dublin Diary 2, 1973
10Arrival
11The Time of My Life
12To the Land of Saints and Scholars
13Official and Other Secrets
14In Demand
15Two Bequests
16Our Leader
17Under the Goya
18Midnight near Moone
19My Knitting in the Fire
Appendix: Homan Potterton's Publications
Prologue
‘The National Gallery Restaurant’ by Paul Durcan
One of the snags about the National Gallery Restaurant
Is that in order to gain access to it
One has to pass through the National Gallery.
I don’t mind saying that at half past twelve in the day,
In my handmade pigskin brogues and my pinstripe double-vent,
I don’t feel like being looked at by persons in pictures
Or, worse, having to wax eloquent to a client’s wife
About why it is that St Joseph is a black man
In Poussin’s picture of ‘the Holy Family’:
The historical fact is that St Joseph was a white man.
I’d prefer to converse about her BMW – or my BMW –
Or the pros and cons of open-plan in office-block architecture.
I clench the handle of my briefcase
Wishing to Jesus Christ that I could strangle Homan Potterton–
The new young dynamic whizz-kid Director.
Oh but he’s a flash in the pan –
Otherwise he’d have the savvy to close the National Gallery
When the National Gallery Restaurant is open.
Who does Homan Potterton think he is – Homan Potterton?
From The Berlin Wall Cafe by Paul Durcan published by Harvill Press. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. ©1995.
The poet Paul Durcan published this poem first in Image magazine and when I read it (having, to my shame, never heard of Paul) I was not very impressed. I was engaged at the time in trying to close, not the National Gallery, but the National Gallery restaurant. It, and its menus, dated from 1968 and very few of the people who lunched there – arriving in their BMWs and discussing office-block architecture – had the slightest interest in Poussin or indeed any other artist represented in the gallery. As to why St Joseph is a black man in Poussin’s Holy Family, I had had very little time to consider such iconographical complexities since becoming director of the gallery a year or so previously.
But I was new, and I was young, and I am flattered that Paul described me as a ‘dynamic whizz-kid’. But was I a ‘flash in the pan’?
Yes, I am afraid I was. Paul was right. Many people thought it unseemly when I resigned after only eight years in office.
Mine was not the shortest-lived directorship: several of my predecessors