Presentation of painting completes a circle

A copy of a painting presented to Kilcullen Heritage Centre could become an iconic representation of the town. It depicts the bridge that links the two physical parts of the community and also has a fascinating back story which stretches through mid-Kildare and across the Continent, and times gone by.

The picture was presented by local solicitor Pat Reidy and shows a view across the bridge from the Market Square end. The work was produced in 1946 and portrays a stormy day, with the people in the picture rushing to escape the driving rain. They include a driver and his horse and cart, a woman with a child, and a young lad on the run.



"It was painted by Claude Bendall, a British artist who was born in 1891 in England," says Pat Reidy. "My grandfather on my mother's side, Joe Partridge, lived near where the Library is in Newbridge and one day in 1914 he saw this man in military uniform sketching the bridge."

Being something of a painter himself, Joe Partridge struck up a conversation with the young soldier, who had been conscripted into the British Army at the outbreak of WW1 and sent to the Curragh Camp for training.

"In his spare time he sketched and painted local scenes. He and my grandfather became very good friends and Bendall would regularly come and stay with him down the years. My own father was given the paintings after my grandfather died, and I have a number of them at home."

The artist in later years lived near Wrotham in Kent, but regularly travelled abroad. In particular he followed the Gypsy haunts and painted them in France and Ireland. "He was particularly interested in a form of impressionistic painting using a technique called gouache. This involved mixing oils with gum and making the painting with a small blade, like a nail file, instead of a brush. Such was his reputation in this genre that the Irish painter Sean Keating came down to my grandfather's home to meet Bendall and watch him work in the technique."

Bendall as a youngster had shown a brilliance in playing the piano, and was taught the instrument by Paderewski. He could well have successfully entered that sector of the arts, but instead chose painting, and studied at the Sorbonne from 1908 before returning to England and subsequently a short military career. But there remained a music connection in that French composer Claude Debussy was his godfather, and in later years Bendall went under the name of Claude D Bendall, the 'D' standing for Debussy.

Whatever the eventual breadth of the works of the painter, who died in 1970, the various pieces he did in the mid-Kildare area very strongly tie him to around here. "I have another wonderful painting he did of Athgarvan Mill," says Pat Reidy. "And there is a magnificent full length portrait of my Aunt Eithne Flanagan also here, in the possession of the Flanagan family."

Accepting the copy on behalf of Kilcullen Heritage Centre, Nessa Dunlea said she was really thrilled to have it. "I never expected it to be such a wonderful painting when Pat told me about it two years ago," she says. "I remember the bridge when it was like that."

There's a nice end-piece to this story too, from Pat Reidy's perspective. "I was always told that my mother Evelyn, who is still alive and 90 years of age, was the face model for the little girl in the picture."

From his office in Kilcullen's Market Square, on a wintry day, he can easily imagine an artist down by the bridge that's the most significant view from his window, and muse on the unexpected meetings that can result in circles and connections down through generations and across countries and continents. One of those circles has just been completed by his presentation of a print to a heritage centre across the road.

This article was first published on the Kilcullen page of The Kildare Nationalist.