Who Do I Think I Am? by Homan Potterton
ROBERT O’BYRNE Who Do I Think I Am? by Homan Potterton Merrion Press £22.99 Oldie price £18.08 inc p&p
In 2001, Homan Potterton produced a charming memoir of his childhood in rural Ireland during the 1950s. That bald description makes the book sound like many others published in recent decades: invariably descriptions of an impoverished upbringing dominated by the Roman Catholic church.
Rathcormick was different because the Potterton family, while not rich, was prosperous, industrious and Protestant, three characteristics which set its members apart from many of their County Meath neighbours.
The book enjoyed deserved success and evidently encouraged the author to write another volume, this time focusing on his career in the National Galleries of both London and Dublin. That he should have had any kind of career at all, let alone one in which he enjoyed considerable success, appears to cause him some surprise. I fear this is an instance of what today has come to be called humblebragging. Potterton was ambitious and, like his forebears, hard-working, and the youthful success he achieved in his chosen field owed more to steady application than, as he might wish the reader to believe, to good luck.
This allowed him at the age of 27 to join the National Gallery in London in 1974 as an assistant keeper. It is clear he accomplished a great deal during his six years in the job – including writing a bestselling guide to the gallery – and was disinclined to leave when offered the position of director of the National Gallery of Ireland. His reluctance proved well-founded. While familiar with the institution, having worked there before going to London, he was not accustomed to the bureaucracy and begrudgery that blights so much of Irish public life. Potterton seems to believe the fact he was not a Roman Catholic damned him in the eyes of many civil servants with whom he had to deal. I suspect it was the fact that he displayed imagination and initiative, two traits guaranteed to cause outbreaks of hostility in Ireland.
On the other hand, he is entirely and refreshingly accurate in his assessment of Charles Haughey, a specious scoundrel who was intermittently the country’s taoiseach during this period. Mr Haughey liked to portray himself as a man of culture who understood the finer nuances of life. In truth, despite a weakness for handmade Charvet shirts and expensive wine, he was just an average vulgarian, in addition to being a blaggard and a bully, as Potterton soon discovered.
On one occasion, Haughey informed the audience attending an international art conference in Dublin that the more and sooner all Old Master paintings from historic country houses were sold out of Ireland the better. Haughey lived in such a property on the outskirts of the city, where he liked to play at being a country gentleman. Most of the pictures hanging on its walls, as Potterton observed during a visit, were portraits of Haughey, none ever likely to find a market outside the country.
Altogether more cultivated were the Beits, Sir Alfred and his wife, Clementine, who lived in splendour at Russborough, one of the country’s loveliest Georgian houses. The couple owned a spectacular collection of Old Masters, which were stolen on several occasions, most notably by the English debutante turned IRA member, Rose Dugdale. Potterton recounts his role in persuading the Beits that the pictures’ long-term security best rested with the National Gallery of Ireland, to which they were duly donated.
He also describes an entertainingly ludicrous episode when he was sent a ransom demand after the cream of the Beit collection had yet again been stolen from Russborough, and he was obliged to parlay with the supposed thieves.
Moments like these keep the pages turning until the book rather abruptly ends with Potterton, unwilling to suffer civil service vacillation any longer, resigning from his position. What happened next? I suppose we must await a third volume to find out.