ATWOOD o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-16 published
Jerome Hamilton
BUCKLEY
Husband, father, professor. Born August 30, 1917, in Toronto.
Died January 28 in Cambridge, Massachusetts., of natural causes,
aged 85.
By Margaret
ATWOOD and David
STAINES,
Page
A24
Every American Thanksgiving, Jerry and Elizabeth Buckley would
invite at least one of Terry's graduate students to their home
in Belmont, Massachusetts., for the customary turkey dinner.
(In the 1960s, the graduate student was Margaret
ATWOOD; in the
'70s, David
STAINES.)
There, surrounded by their three children,
Nicholas, Victoria, and Eleanor, and other guests, Jerry would
regale everyone with tales of Puritan ancestors, though they
were not "his" ancestors both Jerry and Elizabeth were born and
raised in Toronto, and they were distinctly Canadian in their
gracious manners, their widespread generosity, and their affections.
At a large institution such as Harvard, Jerry stood out for his
kindness and humanity.
Jerry attended Humberside Collegiate Institute and then Victoria
College in the University of Toronto, where his courses included
Elizabethan literature offered by Northrop
FRYE and Shakespeare
offered by E. J.
PRATT. As a young poet and critic, he reviewed
new works by Robinson Jeffers and Virginia Woolf, and won a prize
for an essay titled New Techniques in Contemporary Fiction. Graduating
with a B.A. in 1939, he chose Harvard Graduate School, obtaining
his PhD in 1942. On June 19, 1943, in Toronto, he married Elizabeth
ADAM/ADAMS, his confidante and soul mate.
University teaching posts were thin on the ground in Canada during
the Second World War. Jerry used to describe his one job interview
with a Canadian university: They were less interested in his
a academic credentials, he said, than in whether he was a Christian
and whether he drank. If he did the latter, they made it clear
that he must do it with the curtains closed so as not to corrupt
the students. He took a job in the United States.
His teaching career took him to the University of Wisconsin,
where he rose from instructor in 1942 to full professor in 1954
to Columbia University from 1954 until 1961; and
to Harvard University,
where he taught for 26 years 1987. Named Gurney Professor of
English Literature in 1975, in this distinguished chair he followed
Douglas BUSH and
B.
J.
Whiting;
BUSH, another ex-Canadian, welcomed
Jerry BUCKLEY to Harvard, as Jerry recollected, "with open arrns...
filled with theses."
A Harvard seminar on Victorian critics led by Howard Mumford
Jones prodded Buckley's interest in William Ernest Henley, and
his dissertation on Henley became his first published book, William
Ernest Henley: A Study in the Counter-Decadence of the Nineties
(1945). In 1951 he secured his reputation as a major Victorianist
with The Victorian Temper, and in 1960 he re-established Tennyson's
stature in literary studies with his Tennyson: The Growth of
a Poet. The rise of Victorian studies owes very much to his dedicated
scholarship and his inspiring leadership.
He was passionately devoted to his subject, so much so that he
often seemed to become the incarnation of it. Former students
remember with affection riveting oral performances of his favourite
authors, such as Dickens. Striding across the room, long arms
waving, he would "become" Mr. Micawber or Ebenezer Scrooge. His
performances would be interspersed with strange bits of gossip,
which he would also act out, becoming Tennyson at an advanced
age, creeping around behind an alarmed woman at a garden party
to inform her that her stays were creaking, or reciting with
verve and relish one of Edward Lear's parodies of his beloved
Tennyson. Many of Terry's former graduate students were at his
funeral to pay tribute to a superb humanist and an equally superb
friend.
Margaret ATWOOD and David
STAINES were among Jerry
BUCKLEY's
graduate students.
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ATWOOD o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-04 published
A painter of real people
Toronto artist sought to get beneath a subject's veneer to achieve
a 'luminous presence'
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special to The Globe and Mail Thursday, December
4, 2003 - Page R11
'She'll paint you the way she wants," David
MIRVISH, patron and
art collector, once said of the Canadian portrait painter Lynn
DONOGHUE.
"She's sensitive to mood," Mr.
MIRVISH, who sat for Ms.
DONOGHUE
on several occasions, told The Financial Post Magazine in 1984.
"She may catch you at a different angle, and not every subject
feels that's the way they want to be seen. The important thing
is whether it's a successful picture or not. You shouldn't expect
to like a portrait."
But what you could expect if you were having your portrait painted
by Ms. DONOGHUE is that you would at the very least enjoy the
process. Sitting for the Toronto-based painter was like having
tea with a lively, old friend.
"You were always chatting about this and that with Lynn," said
Father Daniel
DONOVAN, an art collector and professor of theology
at St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto, who also
sat for Ms.
DONOGHUE. "
She was always vibrant and alive."
Always seeking to get beyond a person's veneer, Ms.
DONOGHUE
enjoyed the process of trying to draw out her subjects. "She
wanted people to [be] open and communicate with her," Father
DONOVAN said.
Mr. DONOGHUE, considered one of the pre-eminent portrait painters
in Canada, died last month in Toronto. She was 50.
"She made a huge impact [in the Canadian art world] and did so
at a very young age," said Christian Cardell
CORBET, founder
of the Canadian Portrait Academy.
"She was at a stage... where she was just about to take off,"
Mr. CORBET said. "What she could have contributed was just cut
short."
Ms. DONOGHUE started showing her work in 1973. Her early work
caused a stir when some galleries refused to show her giant portraits
of naked males. Since then she has had countless group shows
and solo exhibitions. Her work can be found in the Art Gallery
of Ontario, the Ontario Legislature, the National Museum of Botswana,
the Vancouver Art Gallery, and several other private and public
collections.
Ms. DONOGHUE, who was elected a member of the Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts in 1991, did both commissioned and non-commissioned
portraits. One of her notable commissions was of John
STOKES,
the former speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Last year, Ms.
DONOGHUE completed a portrait of Margaret
ATWOOD
that came was at once celebrated. After approaching the Canadian
literary icon to paint her portrait, Ms.
DONOGHUE set about to
capture Ms.
ATWOOD using bright oil colours. In the portrait,
Ms. ATWOOD, sits with her legs crossed and looks out at the viewer
wearing a vibrant, green shirt.
"She was not afraid of colour," Mr.
CORBET said. "She would take
it [paint] right from the tube."
Three years ago, Terrence
HEATH, the former director of the Winnipeg
Art Gallery, wrote in BorderCrossings following an exhibition
of Ms. DONOGHUE's work at a Toronto gallery: "Each painting...
is a statement in colour. The figures are set in colour fields
that tell you as much about the figure as the likeness and body
position do. Most remarkable about these paintings is their sheer
luminous presence."
"She created honest portraits" and "didn't follow much of a systematic
approach to portraiture," Mr.
CORBET said. "She allowed her spontaneity
and intuition to come through."
Ms. DONOGHUE once said that her historic mentors, such as Frans
Hals, conveyed in their portraits the feeling of people who are
very alive. "Why do people know, when they look at a painting
of mine, that it is a real person?" she told The Financial Post
Magazine in 1984. It was one of her perpetual queries into the
nature of portrait painting.
Lynn DONOGHUE was born on April 20, 1953, in the small community
of Red Lake in northern Ontario, more than 500 kilometres from
Thunder
Bay.
Her father Graham
DONOGHUE was a mining engineer
who moved his family about, including a spell in Newfoundland.
Ms. DONOGHUE finished high school at H.B. Beal Secondary School
in London, Ontario She graduated in 1972 with a special art diploma.
Having lived in England and New York as an artist, Toronto was
home to Ms.
DONOGHUE.
She lived with her 14-year-old son Luca
in a loft in a converted industrial building in the city's west
end. Her loft doubled as her studio. In the cluttered space,
some of her paintings hung on the walls and canvases were stacked
next to the essentials required for daily living. Living off
the sale of her paintings, Ms.
DONOGHUE financially scrapped
by month to month, her Friends said.
Described as vivacious and gregarious, she was "the life of the
party." An active member of the arts community, she could regularly
be seen at gallery openings and art shows around Toronto. Outside
the art world, she was an active community member. Most recently
she helped to organize events for Toronto's new mayor David
MILLER
during the municipal election. She also attended the Anglican
Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, where a painting she had done of
her son's baptism hung on the wall.
An exhibit of Ms.
DONOGHUE's most recent major work is scheduled
to open at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario, in March.
Called the The Last Supper, the large group piece, which Ms.
DONOGHUE started in 2001, consists of 13 portraits encircling
a central table piece, which is itself a triptych. The installation
requires a total wall space of about 5 metres by 10 metres (16
feet by 34 feet).
Father DONOVAN well remembers how he first learned of the project.
One day, he received a call from Ms.
DONOGHUE asking if he would
have lunch with her. She had an idea she wanted to talk to him
about. The idea turned out to be the The Last Supper and Ms.
DONOGHUE said she needed his help. After their lunch, she invited
Father DONOVAN, along with several others, to dinner. While they
were eating and drinking, she photographed them, capturing their
mannerisms and expressions. From the photographs, she made a
series of sketches which she then used to develop the large group
piece.
"She loved what she was doing," Mr.
CORBET said. "There was this
inner drive that said 'go on.' "
Ms. DONOGHUE, an insulin-dependent diabetic, died on November
22 in a Toronto hospital, after suffering from an insulin reaction
that led to a coma.
She leaves her parents Marjorie and Graham
DONOGHUE, her son
Luca LANGIANO and his father, Domenico
LANGIANO and sister Barbara
VAVALIDIS.
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