T. P. Flanagan

Flanagan was born on 15 August 1929 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. He was the eldest of seven children, whom were raised by two aunts after their mother died at a young age.{{Cite web|date=2011-10-23|title=TP Flanagan: Artist and teacher whose work inspired Seamus Heaney|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/tp-flanagan-artist-and-teacher-whose-work-inspired-seamus-heaney-2269579.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220526/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/tp-flanagan-artist-and-teacher-whose-work-inspired-seamus-heaney-2269579.html |archive-date=26 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-28|website=The Independent|language=en}} Flanagan received a general education from the Presentation Brothers at St Michael's College, Enniskillen between from 1943 to 1949.{{Cite book|last=Catto|first=Mike|title=Art in Ulster 2: a history of painting, sculpture and printmaking, 1957-1977|publisher=Blackstaff Press|year=1977|isbn=0856401293|location=Belfast|pages=162}}

Flanagan took up painting in his teens and learned the art of watercolour painting from the local portraitist and landscape artist Kathleen Bridle in night classes at Enniskillen Technical College.{{Cite book|last=Anglesea|first=Martyn|title=Royal Ulster Academy of the Arts Diploma Collection|publisher=Royal Ulster Academy|year=2000|isbn=0-900903-54-6|location=Belfast, Northern Ireland|pages=94}} He attended Belfast College of Art from 1949 until 1953 studying under Romeo Toogood, John Luke and Tom Carr. After his graduation, Flanagan taught at the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Lisburn and the Assumption Convent in Ballynahinch, County Down, before obtaining a full-time post at St. Mary's College of Education in 1955 where he stayed for 29 years until his retirement in 1984. He became Head of Art at St. Mary's in 1965.

In 1959, Flanagan married actress Sheelagh Garvan of the Lyric Players.

Flanagan showed one oil painting Deirdre at the 1953 Oireachtas Exhibition in Dublin but waited until 1969 to contribute another, Inbhear. He exhibited regularly at Oireachtas throughout the 1970s and beyond.{{Cite book|last=Stewart|first=Ann M|title=Irish art societies and sketching clubs: index of exhibitors, 1870-1980, A-L|publisher=Four Courts Press|year=1997|isbn=1851823271|volume=1|location=Dublin|pages=240–241}} Flanagan was later awarded the Oireachtas painting prize in 1974.

Flanagan joined Wilfred Stewart and Lewis Logan for a three-man show at Belfast's CEMA Gallery in February 1954 when he exhibited a number of works including Twilight, Howard Street{{Cite news|date=17 February 1954|title=Exhibition is well worth several visits|page=3|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=3 March 2021}} which he showed three months later at the Ulster Arts Club.{{Cite news|last=MacArt|date=5 May 1954|title=Arts Club exhibition liveliest for years|page=3|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=3 March 2021}} In 1954, Flanagan also participated in his first annual Royal Ulster Academy of Arts exhibition, showing three works, two flower paintings and one landscape.Stewart, 1997, p.240 He contributed two works to the annual exhibitions in both 1955 and 1956.Stewart, 1997, p.241 The Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Art gave Flanagan his first one-man show hosted by the Piccolo Gallery, Belfast in November 1958.{{Cite book|title=Causeway; the arts in Ulster|publisher=Arts Council of Northern Ireland|year=1971|editor-last=Longley|editor-first=Michael|location=Belfast|pages=55}}

By the 1960s, Flanagan had carved out a successful and parallel career as an artist, and his family became close to poet Seamus Heaney's family. Flanagan painted Boglands (for Seamus Heaney) in 1967 which formed part of his Gortahork Series. Heaney reciprocated in writing Bogland: for TP Flanagan published in the collection entitled Door into the Dark of 1969. Seamus Heaney, for whom he painted various pieces, described Flanagan as being in tune "with the notion of an earthly paradise and hence the radiance of the painting is entirely this-worldly...and always there has been that necessary painterly hedonism".{{cite web|title=TP Flanagan Biography|url=http://flanagan-art.com/tp_biography.html|accessdate=17 November 2019}}

In 1960, Flanagan was appointed one of seven trustees of the newly formed Lyric Players Trust including Deborah Brown and John Hewitt, a position he was to hold for five years.{{Cite book|last=Bell|first=Sam Hanna|title=The theatre in Ulster: a survey of the dramatic movement in Ulster from 1902 until the present day|publisher=Gill & Macmillan|year=1972|isbn=0717105695|location=Dublin|pages=118}} That same year he displayed his work at the new CEMA Gallery. An invited artist, he showed alongside several others including Colin Middleton, Deborah Brown, Gerard Dillon and William Conor, at the inaugural exhibition in the gallery designed by the architect Robert McKinstry.{{Cite news|date=13 May 1960|title=New CEMA art gallery booked for six months|page=10|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} In 1961, Flanagan was patronised with a one-man show at CEMA's Chicester Street Gallery of which the Belfast Telegraph's Kenneth Jamison writes:

"Light is the artist's theme, its flux rain-filtered over moist fields, spilling an irregular pattern on low lough-side hills, mirrored again from the still lough's face...Always one is conscious of the infinite subtle modulations of light and colour. He does not refine forms. Rather he simplifies in terms of light and paint to reveal the sheer mood and poetry of the experience; but there is nothing casual about the structure of his pictures."{{Cite news|last=Jamison|first=Kenneth|date=14 December 1961|title=An Ulster School of Landscape Artists?|page=10|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}}

Flanagan had a one-man exhibition at the Richie Hendricks Gallery in Dublin{{Cite news|date=19 December 1963|title=PC Lynch 'buys' a piece of Fermanagh|page=7|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} and showed two works at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art's twenty-fifth anniversary show in 1964.{{Cite news|last=Bowyer|first=A W|date=3 October 1964|title=Attractively Displayed|page=3|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=20 March 2021}} He showed in the Four Ulster Painters exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in 1964.{{Cite book|last=Buckman|first=David|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/77011785|title=Artists in Britain since 1945, Volume 1, A to L|date=2006|publisher=Art Dictionaries Ltd|isbn=978-0-9532609-5-9|edition=|location=Bristol|pages=522|oclc=77011785}}

Deborah Brown invited Flanagan on to the committee to oversee an arts bursary scheme set-up in memory of patron of the arts, Alice Berger-Hammerschlag in 1970 which aided many younger artists to travel and to purchase equipment and materials.{{Cite book|last=|first=|title=Deborah Brown: from painting to sculpture|publisher=Four Courts Press|year=2005|isbn=1-85182-969-5|location=Dublin|pages=15}} The Arts Council of Northern Ireland's gallery was the venue for Flanagan's 1966 solo exhibition.{{Cite news|last=Bowyer|first=A W|date=27 May 1966|title=Landscapes of a special kind|page=11|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} In 1968, Flanagan's work travelled to John Hewitt's Herbert Art Gallery for a joint show where he exhibited with Colin Middleton.{{Cite news|last=Bowyer|first=A W|date=23 August 1968|title=Understanding Modern Art|page=13|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} Flanagan donated a picture to an exhibition to raise funds for victims of civil disturbances in Belfast in the autumn of 1969. The exhibition at Queen's University was organised by his wife, Sheelagh, and showed work from thirty artists, including Deborah Brown, Cherith McKinstry, William Scott and F E McWilliam.{{Cite news|last=Rosenfield|first=Ray|date=30 October 1969|title=30 artists in show to aid riot victims|page=10|work=Irish Times|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1969/1030/Pg010.html#Ar01007|access-date=5 April 2021}}

In 1971, his work was included in the international exhibition, ROSC: The Irish Imagination in Dublin.{{Cite news|title=Landscape artist's work had 'stark lyric power'|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/landscape-artist-s-work-had-stark-lyric-power-1.583779|access-date=2021-02-28|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en}} Kathleen Bridle was reunited with her two most famous students in 1973 when the Arts Council of Northern Ireland staged a touring exhibition of her works alongside Flanagan and William Scott.{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55132808|title=In the time of shaking : Irish artists for Amnesty International|date=2004|publisher=Art for Amnesty|others=Benson, Ciarán. Amnesty International|isbn=0-9547258-0-8|location=Dublin|pages=250|oclc=55132808}}

The wife of the Northern Irish Secretary of State Colleen Rees was the curator of a personal selection of works from Ulster Artists hosted at the Leeds Playhouse Gallery in 1976. Flanagan's work was among 49 works from various artists where he was displayed alongside Raymond Piper, Carolyn Mulholland, Joe McWilliams, Mercy Hunter, Tom Carr and many others.{{Cite news|date=14 September 1976|title=Mrs Rees view of Ulster|page=3|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=20 March 2021}} In 1977, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland held a solo exhibition of his work from 1967 to 1977.{{Cite book|last=Buckman|first=David|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/77011785|title=Artists in Britain since 1945, Volume 1, A to L|date=2006|publisher=Art Dictionaries Ltd|isbn=978-0-9532609-5-9|edition=|location=Bristol|pages=522|oclc=77011785}}

Flanagan was part of a consortium of forty well-known Ulster names who attempted to win the Independent Television franchise for Northern Ireland in 1979.{{Cite news|last=McCreary|first=Alf|date=5 November 1979|title=All star bid to win UTV franchise|page=1|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=17 March 2021}} He became an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1983. In 1984, the National Self-Portrait Gallery purchased a Flanagan self-portrait alongside fellow Northerners Brian Ballard, Brian Ferran and F E McWilliam.{{Cite news|date=12 May 1984|title=Portrait gallery acquisitions|page=27|work=Irish Times|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1984/0512/Pg027.html|access-date=3 May 2021}}

Flanagan was resident artist at Sligo Art Gallery for the duration of the 1991 Yeat's Summer School. His exhibition was based on thirty works created and inspired by the Sligo landscape where he had spent considerable time in his childhood. The collection spanned most of his career beginning with those created in the 1960s.{{Cite news|date=9 August 1991|title=T P Flanagan exhibition at Sligo Gallery|page=6|work=Sligo Champion|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}}

The Ulster Museum hosted a major retrospective covering fifty years of Flanagan's work in 1995. The catalogue contained a foreword written by Seamus Heaney and a critical essay by Curator of Art at the Ulster Museum, Brian Kennedy.{{Cite news|last=Dunne|first=Aidan|date=26 November 1995|title=Rooted in their own landscape|page=53|work=Sunday Tribune|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} Shortly thereafter Flanagan accepted an invite to present a retrospective at the Stadsmuseum Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2000, Flanagan returned to the Sligo Art Gallery to present a joint exhibition of works with his daughter Catherine and son Philip.{{Cite news|date=30 August 2000|title=Flanagan family exhibition|page=21|work=Sligo Champion|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=19 March 2021}} In the year before his death Flanagan showed at the Ormeau Baths Gallery where he exhibited works relating to the Troubles.{{Cite news|title=Landscape artist's work had 'stark lyric power'|page=16|work=Irish Times|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/2011/0226/Pg016.html|access-date=10 December 2021}}

Although he exhibited widely, Flanagan was represented for many years by the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Belfast and by the David Hendriks Gallery in Dublin. In later years Flanagan was represented by the Taylor Gallery in Dublin.{{Cite news|last=Dunne|first=Aidan|title=TP Flanagan, one of generation's finest landscape artists, dies|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/tp-flanagan-one-of-generation-s-finest-landscape-artists-dies-1.580204|access-date=2021-03-04|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en}}

William Keith, director of the Wellington Tank Company, commissioned Flanagan and three of his Ulster contemporaries, Basil Blackshaw, Charles McAuley and James McIntyre to paint one picture each to be donated to the geriatric ward at Belfast City Hospital, who had cared for his dying father just a few months earlier.{{Cite news|date=23 November 1955|title=An Ulsterman's Diary: Original thanks|page=4|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk|access-date=3 March 2021}}

The 1970s saw Flanagan complete a number of prestigious commissions including one to produce a design commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Northern Irish state, Ulster '71, in 1970. He received a further commission from the Ulster '71 Festival committee in the following year when he produced a mural in County Fermanagh.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland funded a Flanagan portrait of Belfast feminist, trade-unionist and peace activist Saidie Patterson in 1975. In 1977, he completed a line-drawing portrait for Gael Linn's eponymous double LP by Donegal fiddler John Doherty which was released a year later.Catto, 1977, p. 163

Flanagan contributed to The Great Book of Ireland/Leabhar Mór na hÉireann, commissioned and edited by Theo Dorgan and Gene Lambert. The hand-drawn volume on vellum contained works by 143 poets, 121 artists, 9 composers and 1 calligrapher. It was displayed at the Irish Museum of Modern Art at Kilmainham for three months in 1991.{{Cite book|last=McDonnell|first=Joseph|title=Five hundred years of the art of the book in Ireland|publisher=National Gallery of Ireland in association with Merrell Holberton|year=1997|isbn=0903162989|location=London|pages=168}}

The BBC commissioned him to make a film about his painting practise entitled The Painted Landscape, in 1999.

• Royal Ulster Academy: In 1960, Flanagan was elected as an Associate of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts. A mere four years later he was elected an Honorary Academician of the same institution. He was elected President of the RUA in 1978 when he replaced the previous incumbent Mercy Hunter, and was re-elected in three subsequent years. Flanagan was the recipient of the Royal Ulster Academy Gold Medal at the 95th Annual show in 1976 for Study of Castlecoole, Theme described by critic Elizabeth Baird as "a typical Flanagan landscape with subtle, blurred colours and soft light".{{Cite news|last=Baird|first=Elizabeth|date=19 June 1976|title=The (Royal Ulster) Academy Awards|page=6|work=Belfast Telegraph|url=https://search.findmypast.ie/bna/viewarticle?id=bl%2f0002318%2f19760619%2f117&stringtohighlight=royal%20ulster%20academy|access-date=22 January 2021}}

• University of Ulster: Flanagan became only the second ever recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts when he received the accolade from the University of Ulster in 2010. It was conferred at a special ceremony hosted in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland's Ormeau Baths Gallery, and was awarded in recognition of his outstanding services to art.{{Cite web|last=Ireland|first=Culture Northern|date=2010-06-11|title=Dr TP Flanagan|url=https://www.culturenorthernireland.org/features/visual-arts/dr-tp-flanagan|access-date=2021-02-28|website=Culture Northern Ireland|language=en}} Flanagan received an MBE in 2011 for his "services to art internationally".{{Cite web|title=New Year's Honours 2011: CSV - GOV.UK|url=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/416187/NY_2011.csv/preview|access-date=2021-05-09|website=assets.publishing.service.gov.uk|language=en}}

Flanagan died in Belfast on 22 February 2011, aged 81. His works are in public and private collections including the Ulster Museum, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Herbert Gallery.{{cite web|title=Flanagan TP, Landscape artist|url=http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/flanagan-tp.htm|accessdate=17 November 2019}}

• Kennedy, S. B. (2013) T. P. Flanagan: Painter of Light and Landscape (Featuring a foreword by Séamus Heaney), Lund Humphries.

{{Reflist}}

• [https://artuk.org/discover/artists/flanagan-terence-philip-19292011 Examples of Flanagan's work in public collections] via ArtUK.org
• [https://www.rosss.com/artist/terence-p-flanagan-rha-rua/results/332/ Examples of the work of TP Flanagan in private collections] via Ross's Auctioneers & valuers.

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Category:1929 births

Category:2011 deaths

Category:Painters from Northern Ireland

Category:20th-century Irish painters

Category:21st-century Irish painters

Category:21st-century Irish male artists

Category:Irish male painters

Category:Artists from County Fermanagh

Category:People from Enniskillen

Category:Members of the Royal Hibernian Academy

Category:Alumni of Belfast School of Art

Category:Members of the Royal Ulster Academy

Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire

Category:Educators from Northern Ireland

Category:20th-century Irish male artists