AE the poet
AE Russell was renowned for his poetry and painting.
Æ published 330 poems in 14 separate poetry anthologies from 1894 to 1935 and wrote occasional poems in letters to friends, and within prose articles found in journals and newspapers. The poems displayed here only provide a nosegay of AE's poetry range and style.
W. B. Yeats called his greatest friend:
'The one poet of modern Ireland who has moulded a spiritual ecstasy into verse'.
W. B. also said that Æ's work was:
'The most delicate and subtle poetry that any Irishman of our time has written'.
Referring to his own poems, Æ said:
'I think in after ages they will speak to us with deeper voices and meanings'.
Lord Edward Dunsany, considered in the early 1900s as one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world, wrote:
'I regard Æ as the greatest of the Irish Poets, and believe that far more recognition is due to him'.
W. B. Yeats called his greatest friend:
'The one poet of modern Ireland who has moulded a spiritual ecstasy into verse'.
W. B. also said that Æ's work was:
'The most delicate and subtle poetry that any Irishman of our time has written'.
Referring to his own poems, Æ said:
'I think in after ages they will speak to us with deeper voices and meanings'.
Lord Edward Dunsany, considered in the early 1900s as one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world, wrote:
'I regard Æ as the greatest of the Irish Poets, and believe that far more recognition is due to him'.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the poetry of George Russell was very favourably compared with Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Blake and many other great poets due to the depth and range of symbolism, harmony and beauty evident throughout his long literary career. Æ's poetry is highly complex, often layered, and the result of a lifetime of study, contemplation, visionary experience and understanding of ancient philosophies. The fusion of Irish myth and wider spiritualism gives his work both a local and a universal appeal. There is something for everybody who would like to explore the poetry of George Russell.
AE the Painter
'The Spirit of the Pool' by AE
Oil on canvas, 1904
Oil on canvas, 1904
Æ was a very successful painter. He was the only Irish painter to be included among the headline artists exhibited at the New York 'Armory Show' 1913, which was arguably the most important art exhibition ever staged. The organisers aimed to provide an awakening for the American art world to what was going on in Europe. Æ name sat alongside other great living artists including - Degas, Redon, Renoir, Monet, Matisse and Braque, as well as recently deceased greats - Cezanne, Van Gogh, Manet and Gauguin. It is interesting to note that Picasso, who was then aged 31 and already into his fifth period 'Synthetic Cubism', and other Irish artists such as Jack Yeats did not get top billing. Æ had first exhibited his paintings in 1904 alongside Countess Markievicz and her husband, and grown in popularity ever since. Of all Irish artists at the time the only two major names who stayed and painted almost exclusively in Ireland were Æ and Jack B. Yeats.