Louis le Brocquy Táin illustrations

The Tain illustrations are a series of drawings that illustrated Táin Bó Cúailnge. In 1967 Louis le Brocquy was commissioned by publisher Liam Miller to illustrate Thomas Kinsella's inspired version of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, the record of Ireland's proto-historic past.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain remarked, "The Táin Bó Cuailnge - táin, meaning the gathering of people for a cattle raid - is a prose epic with verse passages and forms the centrepiece of the cycle of Ulster heroic stories. It tells of the exploits of King Conchobar and his chief warrior Cúchulainn (The Hound of Ulster) and of the invasion of Ulster by Queen Medb of Connacht in an attempt to capture the Brown Bull of Cuailgne." Dating as far back as the 12th century in manuscript form, this legend has been treated both academically by scholars and linguists and romantically by such Revival writers as Yeats and Lady Gregory. The Dolmen Edition of the saga was to give, in Kinsella's words, the first 'living version of the story", a version true to its blunt and brutal Gaelic character.' Louis le Brocquy painted several hundred calligraphic brush drawings over a period of six months retaining 133 illustrations. The artist noted, "Any graphic accompaniment to a story which owes its existence to the memory and concern of a people over some twelve hundred years, should decently be as impersonal as possible. The illustrations of early Celtic manuscripts express not personality but temperament. They provide not graphic comment on the text but an extension of it. Their means are not available to us today - either temperamentally or technically - but certain lessons may be learned from them relevant to the present work. In particular, they suggest that graphic images, if any, should grow spontaneously and even physically from the matter of the printed text. If these images - these marks in printer's ink - form an extension to Thomas Kinsella's Táin, they are a humble one. It is as shadows are thrown by the text that they derive their substance."