An open door to Ikerrin Hawthorn

A beautiful painting titled Ikerrin used to hang above the fireplace in my grandparent’s dining room. The watercolour depicted a freestanding gabled brick house framed by an ornately trimmed verandah and a lush garden in bloom. Ikerrin was my grandfather, Jack Meagher’s childhood home, named after the family ancestral lands in the Barony of Ikerrin, County Tipperary, Ireland.

In the lounge room was another curio, a small-framed sketch also captioned, “Ikerrin,” Wattle Road, Hawthorn. This monochrome sketch, anchored to a place by its caption, is almost abstract. I asked my grandmother about it, and she showed me the back of the frame complete with glued on card and envelope addressed to Miss D. Donovan.

It was a Christmas greeting to her from her future father-in-law, John S. Meagher. The sketch merely shows a stepped tessellated tiled porch, a passageway with front and back doors wide open, flowers beckoning, and the doorway bordered with dense ivy that surrounded the portico and reveals nothing of the gothic surrounds of the house.

John Sheehy Meagher (1863-1940) a prominent barrister of law commissioned Victorian artist Victor Cobb (1876-1945) to undertake the watercolour painting of his beloved property, Ikerrin at 69 Wattle Road, Hawthorn.  The painting shows the rear of the house with an extensive and well-maintained garden. Although it is dated 19 April 1939, autumn in Melbourne, the painting shows the garden with spring blooms of blue delphiniums or foxgloves, large yellow flowers, and staked red roses lining a pathway to the back verandah. A striped awning on the north-eastern side of the house supplements shade from the heavy foliage of a creeper along the verandah, beneath the canopy of what may be a very tall gum tree. On the right hand side of the painting, the view to the western end of the verandah is almost obscured by tall blooms and foliage trussed to a pergola on the pathway to the house.

The sketch of Ikerrin’s doorway was mailed to my grandmother, Dorothy, in December 1939 one month before her wedding to my grandfather, Jack, John Sheehy’s youngest son. There is a faint impression of a signature on the bottom corner, but it is too difficult to ascertain the artist’s signature. For a long time I wondered if the framed picture was an original pencil sketch behind the gauzy glass, but my grandfather’s sister-in-law, Muriel Meagher, gifted me her copy of the sketch which clearly shows it to be a reproduction of a sketch glued to a card with the exact same caption, “Ikerrin,” Wattle Road, Hawthorn.

JS Meagher and three sons outside Ikerrin

Victor Cobb was a pioneer in developing the etching profession in Australia, which lent the artwork well for reproduction. He regularly exhibited his limited edition etchings, pencil illustrations and oil and watercolour paintings.  In addition to landscapes, a recurring theme in Cobb’s work were doorways and narrow lanes; his deft hand producing numerous studies of light, shadows and architectural surfaces. During his formative working years, Cobb often painted and sketched before or after business hours, reflecting the twilight hours in his art. By the time Cobb was commissioned for the Meagher painting, he was retired from the formal constraints of work.

The pencil sketch of Ikerrin’s doorway recalls a number of Cobb’s earlier etchings held at the State Library of Victoria, in particular, the Entrance to Trinity College, Melbourne University (1912); The Cloisters, Melbourne University (1921); The Tower Entrance Melbourne Grammar School (1930); Archway Quadrangle, Scotch College (1929); and Doorway, Old Scotch College East Melbourne (1929).

Catalogue listings for Cobb’s exhibitions provide an insight into the breadth of his craft in oils, watercolour, pencil and etchings. Whilst Dame Nellie Melba saw Cobb’s works on exhibition in Sydney and commissioned him to paint Coombe Cottage[1], I can only speculate where JS Meagher might have seen Cobb’s work. It is quite possible that Meagher met Cobb when he was sketching at Selborne Chambers in the early 1930s, where JS Meagher occupied chamber number 52. An etching of the Selborne Chambers was exhibited for sale at the 1936 Athenaeum Gallery for 1 ½ guineas[2].

It makes sense that a study from Cobb’s preparatory work for the watercolour painting was later used for a Christmas card in the same year, particularly as Cobb’s motifs often featured on Christmas cards[3]. An open door to Ikerrin sends a lovely Christmas message and was clearly treasured by Meagher’s new daughter-in-law who framed the sketch.

Sadly, the door was not left open to the Meagher family for very long. After the painting of Ikerrin was finished in 1939; John Sheehy succumbed to a short illness the following year and died in August 1940. Ikerrin was sold in 1941 to the McLennan family who resided at the property until the late 1960s. After the McLennans sold the property, the house was demolished to make way for sixteen single story units on the large property. Today, two old gum trees bear witness to bygone times whilst Victor Cobb’s watercolour and pencil sketch evoke the spirit and legacy of Ikerrin, in what now remains as the modern day ancestral lands in Hawthorn for the Meagher family.

[1] A.C, ‘Australian Artists of To-Day, Victor Cobb, Etcher’ in The Age, Saturday 25 April 1931, p.7.

[2] Victor Cobb, Exhibition of Oils, Water Colors, Etchings and Pencil Pictures, Athenaeum Art Gallery, Collins Street Melbourne Monday 14^th December to 24^th December [1936] Catalogue held by SLV http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/107081

[3] ‘Obituary Mr V.E Cobb’ in The Argus, Monday 3 December 1945, p.4.