Let victims decide what to do with Shine’s art
YOUR story about the National Gallery owning a €150,000 painting donated by paedophile doctor Michael Shine (Mail, March 5), raises an interesting conundrum about art and its provenance.
Is the work tainted by association with the monstrous Shine? The piece itself is an important historical document from our Famine era. It’s titled An Ejected Family by Erskine Nicol and portrays a heartrending scene of a family forced onto the side of the road for failing to pay their rent.
Art and journalistic engravings were the photography of their day and this image offers us another insight into the terrible hardships endured by our forebears during the Famine years (although Nicol’s stylised peasants look quite wellfed and clothed – far from the reality of the time).
The Gallery is now posed with the question: what do they with it? Do they hide it in a storage room? Or do they continue to show it when required?
The reality is that many, if not most, priceless works of art will have passed through the hands of nefarious people over the centuries: unscrupulous dealers, Nazis, child abusers, criminals...
The artists themselves may have had questionable habits and lifestyles. Caravaggio was an absolute swine and once killed a man. Artist Walter Richard Sickert is believed by many to have been Jack The Ripper. Our own national poet, WB Yeats, was an occultist.
What do we do with the work of these men?
As an art lover, I would urge our wonderful National Gallery – which is one of the most magical places to spend an afternoon – to consider this as a case for special treatment, and ask Shine’s victims what they would like done with the painting.
I would hope those brave men will give their blessing for the painting to be displayed.
If the victims don’t agree, then I would ask the gallery to place this painting in storage until such time as those concerned have passed through this mortal veil.
They have suffered too much already.
DAVID KELLY, Co. Dublin.
Kim ‘plays’ Trump
LAST week Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un got together for what turned out to be a pointless powwow. They got out their peacepipes and blew smoke into each others faces.
Trump then asked Kim Jong-un if he would like to get rid of his nuclear weapons program. Kim told him: ‘I don’t think I will.’
And so the talks collapsed and they both went home early.
The whole charade turned out to be nonsense on stilts. Yet Trump maintained that they were still good friends and that Kim Jongun was a great leader.
These two unlikely chums appear to have a lot in common. They are both heads of state consumed by megalomania and suffering from severe common sense deficiencies.
They both know where all the bodies are buried. In Trump’s case metaphorically, and in Kim Jong- un’s case, quite literally.
They both appear to have closets bulging with skeletons.
On a lighter note, they both look very uncomfortable in a suit. With Trump it looks as if the suit is actually wearing him. Kim Jongun has a penchant for flared trousers that are so long and wide you can’t see his shoes.
They do have their differences though. Apparently Trump is not musical and is all thumbs, while Kim Jong-un has a keen interest in stringed instruments.
This can be seen by the way he strings Trump along and plays him like a fiddle. GER CARSON, Co. Donegal
In praise of Trump
FOUR years ago the world was a much more frightening and dangerous place.
The aggressive war-mongering of the Obama/Clinton regime, particularly Hillary Clinton’s disastrous intervention in Libya, made the outlook bleak in the extreme.
Added to this, the volatile regime in North Korea was flexing its nuclear muscles with increasing menace.
Fast forward four years and things look much more promising. The carrot-and-stick approach of President Trump and his team has resulted in a much more peaceful and stable world scene.
Hopefully, the president will gain a second term to continue and finalise his good work.
The last thing we need is a return to the belligerent approach of the establishment, both Democrat and Republican.
We all owe president Trump a debt of gratitude.
ERIC CONWAY, by email. ... I LAUGHED out loud when I read Brendan Kirby’s letter in yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail, in which he said that Donald Trump will be remembered as the greatest president of the USA.
I stopped laughing when I realised he was serious. MARTIN STRINGER,
Co. Mayo.
Tunnel vision
UNDERGROUND tunnels have been discovered below a secondary school in Trim, Co. Meath. It seems they were part of the old Trim jail.
I can just imagine pupils at that school today sitting in Irish class and daydreaming about making their escape through said tunnels. I know I would! GILLIAN CARROLL,
Co. Dublin.