a seminal painting in the history of 20th-century Irish art. It is not only an important transitional work in the artist's oeuvre but one anticipating modernism as an everyday style in Irish art." Critical Reception During its 1951 first exhibition at Gimpel Fils, the painting attracted considerable praise. John Berger observed in Art News and Review: 'Le Brocquy is completely free of contemporary tendency to cosmic megalomania. It has become pretentious to talk of an artist's humility, yet that is what distinguishes his work; his studies testify to his patience, and his final, large picture to his refusal to evade simple but difficult problems by relying on the grandiose cliché ... The right-hand half of the very large Family group is, by itself, the finest bit of contemporary painting I have seen for a long time, and I am now convinced that le Brocquy is one of the really promising (in this case that infuriating word is not an excuse but an achievement) British [sic] painters of his generation.'Eric Newton singled out le Brocquy as "a lyrical artist with an exceptional evocative gift". Following its rejection from the Hugh Lane Gallery, the painting fuelled widespread public hostility towards modern art in the press, while a small group of artists led ineffectual protests in support of contemporary art. Critics viewed the painting as an 'unwholesome and satanic distortion of natural beauty'; the aversion was summed up in an opinion published by the Dublin Evening Mail: 'There is a place for monstrosities in the College of Surgeons - there are plenty there - and it would give me much pleasure to find a place for things like "The Family" [sic] ... It is not given to man to see into the future, but I am quite certain that in another 100 years the works of Turner, Constable, and a galaxy of true artists, whose work is still with us, will be cherished and admired, while things like The Family [sic] will have returned to the oblivion from which they never should have emerged. As notes Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, ‘The artist's image of stark reality in the shape of the terrifying uncertainty of the post-war era and the resultant isolation of the family unit shocked rather than comforted. One letter writer to The Irish Times stated unequivocally that the picture in question is as remote from beauty as the utmost stretch of mortal