Irish Art & Sculpture Auction

Irish Art Auctioneers & Valuers

AUCTION:

Thursday 23rd July, from 7pm

All bidding takes place online through www.deveres.ie Telephone bidding is also available.

Bidding opens on Monday 13th July ON VIEW:

at 35 Kildare Street, Dublin 2

Mon 13th - Thurs 23rd July Mon-Fri, 9.30-5.30pm Sat & Sun, 12-5pm CONTACT:

01 6768300

COLLECTION: From 35 Kildare Street PURCHASER FEES: 25% (incl VAT)

Front cover:

L ot 14, Sean Scully, RA DOUBLE WINDOW

Back cover:

L ot 11, Louis le Brocquy, HRHA HEAD OF FRANCIS BACON

Inside front:

L ot 21, Jack Butler Yeats, RHA THE STREET PERFORMER

Inside back:

Lot 27, Louis le Brocquy, HRHA LIFE STUDY (15 panels)

de Veres 35 Kildare Street, Dublin 2 01 676 8300 www.deveres.ie deveresArtAuctions

@deveresartauctions

PSRA Licence No. 002261 1

Irish Art Auctioneers & Valuers

John de Vere White john@deveres.ie

Rory Guthrie roryguthrie@deveres.ie

We are offering a full viewing facility for this auction.

PPE will be available at reception. Viewing numbers will be monitored.

We can also email further images and condition reports on request.

We would like to thank the following people who assisted in the cataloguing: Frances Ruane, Roisin Kennedy, Marianne O’Kane Boal, Brian Ferran, Karen Reihill, Christopher Ashe, Fergus Kelly, Oliver Sears, Jonathan Bennington.

online Please visit our website for a fully interactive experience, including:

DVTV - a series of interviews

filmed at our Kildare Street Gallery

Join Auctioneers John de Vere White and Rory Guthrie, in conversation with Dr. Frances Ruane, as they discuss the auction highlights and reveal some of the stories behind the paintings and artists, including Sean Scully, Louis le Brocquy, Jack B Yeats, Tony O’Malley and others. Available to view as one episode or as individual lots.

ART VISUALISER Download our latest ‘Art Visualiser’ app, whereby you can superimpose individual lots on to your wall, to get an understanding of how it will look in situ, before you purchase it.

LIVE CHAT During viewing times and auction day we will have a ‘live chat’ facility, whereby you can ask the auctioneers any question you may have about any of the lots in the sale.

Follow us on Instagram @deveresartauctions

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All bidding for this auction takes place online.

Please visit www.deveres.ie to register an account.

BIDDING OPENS ON MONDAY 13th JULY AND REMAINS OPEN UNTIL 7pm ON JULY 23rd Lot 1 closes at 7pm on July 23rd and each subsequent lot will close at intervals of 1 minute. Should a late bid be entered, the bidding time will be extended by 4 minutes on that particular lot. Full details are on our website.

TELEPHONE BIDDING IS AVAILABLE FOR THIS AUCTION Please note there is a ‘live chat’ facility on our website, whereby you can talk directly to the auctioneer throughout the viewing and also during the auction.

All works are on view at 35 Kildare Street.

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1 Sean McSweeney, HRHA, 1935-2018 SUMMER BOG Oil on board, 13½" x 17¾" (34.4 x 45cm), signed & dated 1998, signed & dated verso.

Exhibited: Boyle Arts Festival, 1999.

€2500 - 3500

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2 Stephen McKenna, PPRHA, 1939-2017 ST. MULLIN’S CHURCH, CARLOW Oil on canvas, 12" x 16" (30.5 x 40.5cm), signed, inscribed & dated 2004 verso.

€2000 - 3000

3 Sean McSweeney, HRHA, 1935-2018 TREES, LISSADELL Oil on canvas 10" x 14" (25.6 x 35.6cm), signed & dated ’92, signed & dated ’92 verso.

Provenance: Taylor Galleries, Dublin

€1500 - 2500 6

4 Patrick Collins, HRHA, 1911-1994 SEA ROAD, MONKSTOWN Oil on board, 13¼" x 16" (33.6 x 40.7cm), signed.

Provenance: Richard Hendricks Gallery, Dublin (label verso).

€3500 - 5000

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5 Hughie O’Donoghue, RA, b.1953 EXODUS Oil and photo on wood, 19¾" x 38" (50 x 96.5cm), signed; signed, inscribed & dated 2005 verso.

The MV Plassey is a well known shipwreck that lies on the shore of Inis Oirr, the most easterly of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay. Starting its life as HMS Juliet, a naval trawler, it was sold into the merchant navy in the 1950s before coming aground during an Atlantic storm. Hughie O’Donoghue first visited the Plassey in the early sixties as a child, on a family holiday. The rusting, red hulk found its place in the artist’s memory store of favoured motifs, no longer freighting cargo but historically weighted meaning.

In this 2005 iteration, titled ‘Exodus’, the Plassey is transporting famine struck Irish souls from County Mayo, O’Donoghue’s mother’s home, to an uncertain future in America. The image of the ship is reproduced on translucent Japanese gampi paper, slipped between layers of paint and glaze, evoking a blurred memory of childhood and an inherited trauma that cascaded down from the blackness of the mid nineteenth century.

Oliver Sears, 2020 €7000 - 10000

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6 Hughie O’Donoghue, RA, b.1953 FIELD OF THE COW Oil on canvas, 12" x 18" (30.5 x 46cm), signed; signed, inscribed & dated 2005 verso.

In 2001 Hughie O’Donoghue introduced us to the local names of particular landmarks surrounding his mother’s home in Northwest County Mayo. ‘Naming the Fields’, an exhibition at the Rubicon Gallery took us to such wonders as Tawnanasool (‘Field of the Eyes’) and Knocknalower (‘Field of the Lepers’). ‘Field of the Cow’ comes out of this body of work. Although these places are recalled by the artist in joyful terms – his recollection of summers spent back in Ireland is certainly of a happy time – the image of the cow itself is not a pastiche of a bucolic innocence. O’Donoghue’s use of the subject matter passes by nostalgic reminiscence.

The real search is for an identity fixed in place but not wholly moored in the memory.

Oliver Sears, 2020 €3000 - 5000

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7† Hector McDonnell, ARUA, b.1947 SOMEWHERE NEAR GRAND CENTRAL STATION Oil on canvas, 72" x 48" (182.9 x 122cm), signed, inscribed & dated 2004 verso.

Provenance: Solomon Gallery, Dublin, 2004.

Literature: Cristina Leach, Hector McDonnell exhibition review, Sunday Times, 5 September 2004.

Exhibited: Dublin, Solomon Gallery, Hector McDonnell, New York Paintings, 2004 (label verso).

“I dream about painting, I dream about squeezing the paint out of the tubes… it’s a love affair, it’s an extremely sensuous activity,” Hector McDonnell was born in Glenarm, Co Antrim in 1947 and was the youngest son of the thirteenth Earl of Antrim. His mother was also an artist. McDonnell was first educated in Eton and Oxford and then went on to study painting in Munich and Vienna from 1965-1966, winning the prestigious Darmstadter Kunstpreis in 1979.

Since 1985 McDonnell has spent time living and painting in New York, though instead of painting the beautiful architecture and iconic skylines, he chooses instead to focus on the unfashionable, undesirable neighbourhoods, particularly old bars and shop fronts. In 2009 he says of his own style “I would call myself an impressionist because my paintings are about momentary, transitory impressions- things that are gone the next second”.

The present work is the largest of a series of New York cityscapes the artist undertook in the aftermath of September 11th. Rather than focus on the horrors of the atrocity, McDonnell depicts normal life resuming in the city. There was an additional poignancy to these pictures because the day before 9/11 McDonnell’s girlfriend and daughter had been walking in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. As a whole, the paintings avoid sentimentality and offer only subtle references to the attack itself. Rather, the focus is on life continuing and in this sense, the paintings offer hope in the ordinary, everyday rhythms around us.

€8000 - 12000

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8 Robert Ballagh, b.1943 CUT-OUT WITH A KUMI SUGAI (1974) Acrylic on canvas and board, 82½" x 45¼" (210 x 115cm), signed with initials & dated 1974.

Provenance: David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin (label verso).

The 1967 ROSC Art Exhibition in Dublin was a groundbreaking exhibition. 50 works by major International artists including Picasso, Miro, Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning were assembled.

This was a first for Dublin but it was not just the works on display that fascinated Ballagh, it was the way the visitors looked at them and interacted with them.

“At ROSC, it seemed as if art had become commodified somehow and I found that fascinating. I decided to recreate that feeling” Robert Ballagh began his series of ‘People Looking at Art’ in the late 1960s when he was the most challenging new kid on the block in Irish art. Coming from a background in pop/rock music and a discontinued education in architecture, he brought a new and iconoclastic eye to the art world, not just in Ireland but internationally.

From the outset, Ballagh carved a wide gap between himself and the traditionalists in the RHA as well as the cult of international modernist abstraction, favoured by the Arts Council. The ‘Looking at Art’ series was given its first public iteration in the artist’s inaugural exhibition at the Hendriks Gallery in 1972, when it threw Irish critics and collectors into a spin of excitement. It later formed the basis for a commission for a shopping centre in Clonmel in which many of the compositional elements in the paintings here were used.

The series provides a visual equivalent to Brian O’Doherty’s1 ground-breaking essays about how knowledge of art empowers the privileged, who can enjoy it, in clean, white spaces, neatly separated from the vicissitudes of the world outside.

For the series Ballagh employed a neo-realist style derived from advertising, and thus, quite shocking to traditionalists. The paintings exposed the crass commercial realities and the crude branding of art works, as ‘a Lichtenstein’, ‘an Ellsworth Kelly’, ‘a Hockney’ or ‘a Bridget Riley’, and also pointed out the preciousness of the gallery space, where the audience is generally fashionable but sparse.

That first series was an immediate sell out to collectors like Gordon Lambert, the Arts Council and Ronnie Tallon (on behalf of Bank of Ireland) and led to considerable international exposure for the artist.

Catherine Marshall, October 2016 €8000 - 12000 1 Brian O’Doherty, Beyond the White Cube, 1975.

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9† Frederick Edward McWilliam, CBE, RA, HRUA, 1909-1992 GIRL IN THREE PLANES (1971) Bronze, 11¾" high (30 cm), foundry stamp, ed. 4/5, cast by Fiorini.

Literature: F.E.McWilliam, Ferran & Holman, Lund Humphries, 2012 illus. p. 166.

McWilliam began his ‘Girls’ series in 1969, which lasted until 1971, following his change of theme every three years, which he referred to as ‘a three year itch’. These he saw as ‘spirals, it may be a different spiral but the point is that you don’t actually meet as you would if you went around in a circle.’ When McWilliam began ‘Girls’ series he initiated the practice of making small accurate sketches of each work beside his notebook entry, which was not only for his own identification but also for the London foundries with whom he worked closely. It was his gallery dealer, Victor Waddington, who encouraged McWilliam to extend his series to 5 casts for his smaller works. This allowed the sculptor to cast one or two works which he could extend to 5, depending on demand. He priced his works according to foundry costs allocating one third of the final cost to the foundry, another to the dealer and the final one to himself. Casting costs were considerable which is why McWilliam’s large works were only embarked on when he was assured of a commission, usually from a public body.

McWilliam frequently contrasts roughcast areas with smooth and sometimes highly polished surfaces. During a short period in 1965-66, his ‘Bean’ sculptures were totally smooth surfaces, which contrasted with the metal and textured bronzes, which he consistently made between 1953 and 1960. The best known of these is the bronze figure of Princess Macha, 1957, 244cm, commissioned for Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.

The ‘Girls’ and ‘Leg’ series were predominantly smooth bronzes, which emphasised their sensuality. ‘Girl in Three Planes’ combines McWilliam’s skillful modeling ability and his drawing skills honed by his student days and subsequent teaching years at Slade. The girl poses with one leg outstretched on which she rests her left arm. McWilliam has depicted the hand on her foot by incisive drawing, which he also uses to delineate the right arm and hand and right breast. Elements of his early Surrealism are evident in the cut away body of the girl, which emphasizes the female form and gives a sensation of movement in the play of light and shadow on the highly polished surfaces. Interviewed by The London Times of March 1960, McWilliam, stated that “what appealed to me in Surrealism was that it made for freedom of thinking. I should put it this way, I was for Surrealism but not with it.” This thoughtful assessment might well have been shared with another of McWilliam’s heroes, Pablo Picasso, who McWilliam portrayed in a large dramatic mosaic head made in 1967 after a visit to Mexico where he was fascinated by the use of colourful, sparkling tesserae. Four years later, ‘Girl in Three Planes’ encompasses Picassoesque features in her face and head. The features delineated by incised lines, also echo Picasso’s fine graphic lines. Her head is alert, turning to her right creating a dramatic tension in this seated figure. Although the work embraces modernity there is an element of timelessness in the beauty of the female form and its movement as in Nike of Samothrace, 22 centuries earlier.

Brian Ferran, May 2020 €12000 - 16000

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10† Frederick Edward McWilliam, CBE, RA, HRUA, 1909-1992 LEGS UPENDED (1978) Bronze, 18½" high (47cm), signed with initials, ed. 3/5, cast by Art Bronze.

In the early seventies McWilliam responded to the ‘Troubles’ in his native Northern Ireland by completing his ‘Women of Belfast’, ‘Woman in a Bomb Blast’ and his Banner Series before devoting ten years, from 1977-1987, to his Leg series. The sculptor returns to his love of the female form as he had previously encapsulated in the Girl series of 1969-71. He produced a wide spectrum of shapely female legs which he titled; ‘Legs Entwined’, ‘Legs with Fig Leaf’, ‘Crossed Legs’, ‘Legs Professional’, ‘Legs F. E. McWilliamin his studio at Holland Park, London Static’ and ‘Legs Upended’. The largest bronze in this series was ‘Umbilicus’ (illus. frontispiece, Ferran & Holman) cast in 1977

by Meridian Foundry. Standing 173cm high, the work was initially purchased by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and is now in the Collection of the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio at Banbridge. This work evokes erotic female beauty in the entrance to the gallery introducing visitors to the collection, which includes another major work ‘Legs Static’ of 1978 (illus. p.166 Ferran & Holman) made in the same year as ‘Legs Upended’.

McWilliam had been influenced by the humour in Magritte’s work, which he had seen in the International Surrealist exhibition in London in June 1936 and this humour and acknowledgement is encompassed in ‘Magritte’s Mermaid’, 1978 and “Lady into Fish” 1977 (illus. p.84, Cat. F.E. McWilliam, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1981) which combines Legs with a fish head.

McWilliam used the plaster casts of his different Legs to form a new sculpture as was the case with ‘Legs Upended’ to make ‘Ms Orissa’ three years later. This was a reference to the Hindu Temple sculptures he photographed almost 40 years earlier in Puri, Orissa in the North East of India during the Second World War, when on military service with the RAF. The experience of Indian sculpture remained in his mind as “an art which is both public and private at the same time” which influenced him in becoming a more figurative artist.

‘The Judo Players’ 1980 (illus. p.168, Ferran & Holman) located in St. Columb’s Park, Derry, outside the Foyle City’s Sports Complex was commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. This large work, 221 x 180 x 33cm was begun at this period and produced two years after ‘Legs Upended’. The work combines many elements of his Legs series especially the evocative movement of the two combatants’ feet. In 1950 McWilliam built a small studio at the bottom of his Holland Park garden in Central London where he created most of the sculptures for which he is widely known until his death in 1992 and this studio has been recreated at Banbridge. McWilliam kept his studio in an orderly manner with maquettes, found objects, some African figures, drawings and photographs, including large posters of ladies legs illustrating nylon stockings, all providing him with an invaluable stimulus for his subsequent works. The studio also contains several plaster casts of studies for ‘The Judo Players’ and the plaster cast for ‘Ms Orissa’ with the cast of the legs for ‘Legs Upended’.

Brian Ferran, May 2020

€12000 - 16000

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11 Louis le Brocquy, HRHA, 1916-2012 HEAD OF FRANCIS BACON Oil on canvas, 31½" x 31½" (80 x 80cm), signed & dated 1979 verso.

Le Brocquy’s preoccupation with the human head began in 1964 when he became fascinated by the ancient Celtic tradition of the head as a magic box which contains the spirit. Gradually, his paintings of generic ‘ancestral’ heads led him to painting visual images of literary figures, like James Joyce and W.B Yeats, whose writings elevated them to the status of heroes in Irish culture. In 1979 he began painting an important series of images of the artist Francis Bacon, a close friend since the 1940s, for an exhibition at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris.

Le Brocquy’s portraits are so successful because he recognised the futility of trying to make a single definitive portrait, something static and fixed. He understood that as our perception of someone comes from multiple encounters, from a myriad of aspects, his portraits, like this one of Bacon, needed to embody this sense of flux. Le Brocquy’s method was to work over the surface, decomposing and recomposing it, teasing features out of the surface and just at the point where they began to solidify, letting go again. He wanted to discover an image that goes beyond physical appearance to reach the depths of personality and he succeeded with Bacon, giving us an ageless portrait that reveals the subject’s ferocious intensity and clarity of vision.

Paintings like this one also have a solemnity and grandeur that come from le Brocquy using a visual format that draws on religious art. There isn’t the slightest hint of informality about this Bacon portrait.

There is a formal symmetry, with an aura of light around the head in the tradition of medieval religious art. Extraneous details have been eliminated and the background is simplified so that all the colour, texture and emotional intensity is concentrated on Bacon’s image, that magic box that holds his creative spirit.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €90000 - 120000

Louis le Brocquy and Francis Bacon attending Anne Madden’s exhibition opening at Galerie Darthea Speyer in Paris, 1979, the year he painted this work.

Photo: Edward Quinn, © edwardquinn.com

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12 William Scott, CBE, RA, 1913-1989 STILL LIFE (c. 1960) Watercolour and gouache, 11" x 14¾" (28 x 37.5cm), signed.

Provenance: Archeus Fine Art, London (label verso).

William Scott, one of the few Irish artists who is recognised and collected internationally, was influenced by Abstract Expressionism but was constantly drawn back to European-based figuration, focusing on simple still life subjects. The swings from figuration to complete abstraction were part and parcel of his work.

The period from 1958-1962, from which Still Life probably dates, is characterised by very sensuous painterly abstractions with rich surfaces, their subjects having only the most tenuous links to the observed world. This is a bold and dramatic work in which pared down shapes float on a dense watery background. The composition is built around a visual ‘dialogue’ between two shapes, each pulling your eye outwards in opposite directions.

Although the shape on the right is more insubstantial than its opponent on the left, it holds its own because of the brilliant intensity of the blue line that defines it. In fact, the blue would dominate except for the artist’s clever introduction of orange tones on the extreme left.

Scott’s paintings, like this one, are about creating visual tension that activates the picture surface. The ‘conversation’ in Still Life is animated, with a carefully calibrated visual push and pull between left and right.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, June 2020 €20000 - 30000

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13 Michael van Ofen, German, b.1956 UNTITLED (LANDSCAPE 2007) Oil on canvas, 18" x 21¼" (46 x 53.5cm), signed & dated 2007 verso.

Abstract Expressionist artist, Michael van Ofen, paints representational images simplified to the point of abstraction, just beyond immediate recognition. He calls these “results of a figurative line of development reaching far out into the abstract.” Painting sparingly, he reduces the images to the most necessary motifs through a delicate coordination of brushwork, an elaborate setting of colour and light. The figurative details decrease more and more, in favour of a visualization, a memory or atmosphere of a place. He has held exhibtions at Sies + Höke Gallery , Düsseldorf and Alison Jacques Gallery, London.

€3000 - 5000

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Lot 14, Sean Scully, RA, b.1945

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14 Sean Scully, RA, b.1945 DOUBLE WINDOW (1998) Oil on canvas, 54" x 48⅛" (137 x 122cm), signed & dated verso.

Provenance: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (label verso); acquired Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; Private Collection, Ireland.

Scully is undoubtedly one of the most significant artists alive today, with an impact that reverberates worldwide. To think about him in terms of Minimalism is to miss the mark. While the Minimalists tried to strip away subjectivity and self-expression to concentrate on the neutral aesthetic demands of the picture surface, Scully’s work oozes his personality. His paintings urge the viewer to feel something, their spontaneity placing Scully closer to Abstract Expressionists like Rothko than to carefully precise artists like Barnett Newman. Although his work is geometric and totally abstract, his starting point comes from what he’s looking at or what he’s feeling rather than in solving academic visual problems. In the process of painting he does construct abstract dialogues that are purely visual, but this isn’t the driving force behind the work.

Although the colour is bold, ‘Double Window’ shows how, with Scully, it is carefully nuanced, with underpainting coming through the top layer of paint. This is a particularly theatrical composition, a visual story of opposing forces, the artist struggling to make the double insets live with that powerful background, and to have them live with each other. Scully’s success is that while the struggle is evident, he manages to make it work. There’s a “rightness” when logic tells you otherwise.

‘Double Window’ has the gutsy, muscular feel that is Scully’s hallmark. When you look at it, you can feel the streetwise physicality of the artist. The brushstrokes are full of raw energy, dragged powerfully across the surface. To call the characteristic stripes “lines” don’t do them justice – they are heroic “slabs” of colour that cry out with confidence and intensity. One often talks about the rhythmic feel of a painting and in terms of Scully; this rhythm comes from the repetition of stripes. In this painting he varies their colour and scale, their proportions and their direction. The key dramatic note in this painting is the shift to vertical stripes in the lower window. In an interview with H M Herzog, Scully talked about the “relentless taut musical quality” in his work: “When you have those lines, they’re almost like guitar strings – in space they are vibrative.” In ‘Double Window’, the music has a palpable urgency that is memorable.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €600000 - 900000

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15 Donald Teskey, RHA, b.1956 COASTAL REPORT Oil on canvas, 24" x 30" (61 x 76cm), signed & dated 2016 verso.

€12000 - 16000

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16 John Shinnors, b.1950 BIRDS OVER LOOP I Oil on canvas, six panels, each 12" x 10" (30.5 x 25cm), signed.

Provenance: The Taylor Galleries, Dublin (label verso).

€7000 - 10000

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17 Oisin Kelly, RHA, 1915-1981 HAWK Bronze, 8½" high x 16" long x 8" deep (21.5 x 40.5 20cm), signed.

This bronze hawk by Oisín Kelly was cast in the Dublin Art Foundry during the 1970s, and is one of an issue of seven. The casting was supervised by the artist himself. Oisín derived many of his artistic themes from the natural world and had a particular fondness for birds. His earliest major public work was his ‘Children of Lir’ in the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin, which was dedicated by An Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, in August 1971. This bronze group shows the daughter and three sons of the legendary King Lir being changed into swans by their jealous step-mother. This theme derives from an Irish tale Oidheadh Cloinne Lir “The Death of the Children of Lir”, and symbolizes the painful but dramatic transformation of Ireland set in train by the Easter Rising of 1916.

Oisín also produced many images of birds in his role as Artist-in-residence at Kilkenny Design Workshops (1964-81).

His range of painted ceramic birds included a male and female mallard, a teal, a puffin, a red grouse, a wren, a raven and a tern in flight. In some cases, he portrayed these birds in groups, as in his ‘Cormorants on a rock’ or his ‘Group of gannets’. Perhaps most popular among these works was an owl with its wings extended: this was inspired by a medieval carving at Holycross Abbey, Co. Tipperary.

The present work shows a hawk at rest with its wings folded. The modelling is vigorous and impressionistic with emphasis on the hawk’s powerful beak and formidable talons. In 1972 Oisín carved a hawk in a similar pose in teak with metal legs and talons. This work was illustrated as an Irish postage stamp in the Contemporary Irish Art Series in 1975.

Fergus S. Kelly (author of The Life and Work of Oisín Kelly, published by Derreen Books, 2015) €4000 - 6000

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18 Oisin Kelly, RHA, 1915-1981

HORSE AND RIDER

Bronze, 18¾" x 16" (47.5 x 40.5cm), signed.

This bronze by Oisín Kelly was cast in 1975 at the Dublin Art Foundry as one of an issue of eight. The casting was supervised by the artist himself. Throughout his career, Oisín displayed a special interest in portraying horses in various contexts. One of his best-known public works is his large Chariot of Life at the Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin, which portrays a charioteer driving his two-horse chariot through the flames. On a much smaller scale, he has represented horses racing towards the finishing post in a bronze piece, as well as a delightful wood-carving of a single horse and jockey at full gallop. In the present work, he models a horse and rider in a relaxed pose: the rider has an air of contemplation, while the horse grazes peacefully beneath him. This piece was originally conceived as a memorial for William Butler Yeats, reflecting his much-quoted epitaph: “Cast a cold eye on life, on death, Horseman pass by”.

Oisín was born in Saint James’s Street, Dublin, in 1915. From early childhood he displayed a flair for drawing and painting, but did not become a fulltime professional artist until late adulthood. He attended Mountjoy School, and then went on to Trinity College Dublin in 1933 to study French and Irish. Throughout his time at Trinity, he attended the National College of Art, then in Kildare Street, and developed his skills in a variety of media. After graduation in 1937, he spent a year studying in Frankfurt, and then returned to Ireland to a career in teaching. From 1938 to 1964 he taught successively at Clones High School, Bishop Foy School, Waterford, and Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, providing tuition in Irish, English, French and Art. The establishment of Kilkenny Design Workshops in 1964 provided Oisín with an opportunity to devote himself entirely to Art. He was appointed to the part-time post of Artist-in-residence, and designed a range of products in various media, particularly in pottery. He also designed a very popular series of linen dish-cloths and wall-hangings.

Memorably, he designed a silver version of “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” in which the words of the Irish hymn were ingeniously incorporated in the body of the saint. It was presented to His Holiness John Paul II during his visit to Ireland in 1979. Oisín died of a heart-attack at Kilkenny in 1981 while still in the employment of KDW.

Fergus S. Kelly (author of The Life and Work of Oisín Kelly, published by Derreen Books, 2015)

€7000 - 10000

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19 George Russell, AE, 1867-1935 EVENING PADDLE IN A WOODLAND GLADE Oil on canvas, 21" x 32¼" (53.3 x 81.7cm), signed (twice).

Provenance: Private Collection, Denmark.

George W. Russell (AE - short for Aeon) has been described as a landscape portrait and mural painter. He was born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh and his family moved to Dublin in 1878. He attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and evening classes at the Royal Hibernian Academy. He was friends with artists John Hughes and George Moore as well as W. B. Yeats. Yeats observed that “Russell did not draw from the model as we tried to, for some other image always rose before his eyes (a St. John of the Desert, I remember) and always he spoke to us of his visions”. Yeats also described him as a “mystic of mediaeval type” (Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 433-6). In the Candle of Vision, 1918, 24-28, Russell wrote; “On the mystic path we create our own light… Who has questioned the artist to whom the forms of his thought are vivid as the forms of nature?... I attribute to that unwavering meditation and fiery concentration of will, a growing luminousness in my brain as if I had unsealed in the body a fountain of interior light”. Russell’s paintings, therefore, both reference reality and his surroundings but he adds his own visionary quality to his observation to varying degrees; providing his characteristic interpretation of a scene. The majority of Russell’s paintings were painted in Donegal. He spent his annual summer holidays in Marble Hill near Dunfanaghy and as John Eglinton has commented; “he came to think of this corner of Donegal as his own peculiar spiritual kingdom, and it supplied the themes of his pictures” (Hewitt, 1977: 53).

Edward Burne-Jones is an evident influence on the work of Russell. In ‘Mermaids in the Deep’, a watercolour from 1882, Burne-Jones demonstrates a looser, more impressionistic style than his more polished realism that is characteristic of his larger oils. This work’s influence can be seen in the approach of Russell where symbolism is prioritised through a small collection of figures and a dynamic use of paint to indicate heightened lighting effects and an attendant glow. Burne-Jones has delineated the facial features of his figures more than Russell but the simplicity of these expressions and focus on the drama of the overall composition bears a strong affinity to the approach of Russell. In this painting entitled ‘Evening Paddle in a Woodland Glade’, Russell employs a semi-pointillist technique in his indication of the tiny leaves on the trees. This is not the pure pointillism of George Seuret in his famous composition ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette’ (1884-6), where viewers optically blend the juxtaposed dots of adjacent colours. Here, however, it is used primarily by Russell as a framing device to embrace the action at the centre of the composition in its flanking at left and right foreground.

The four figures are beautifully rendered; two adults and two children. The little girl is placed at the centre of the composition, holding the edge of her dress to keep it dry and with a serious expression, stepping gingerly through the woodland pool.

One woman lies in repose on the bank to the left of this child. She holds up a decorative fan and her eyes are obscured by her arm in this stance. To the right of the little girl a woman stands facing the viewer with a somewhat plaintive expression on her face. She holds the tree branch above her with her left hand. Holding on to her skirts is what appears to be an unclothed little boy but he is so sparely delineated that he appears to almost merge with the woman’s skirts (his mother perhaps).

The colour in this work is nuanced and varied; it includes colours typical of Russell – forest green and brown, pale white, blue, violet and silver. The overall composition is full of narrative import. It suggests a story or series of stories that are contained or possible beyond the frame. It is both a time capsule of life at the time and timeless in its scene of woman and children paddling in a glade. This is a relatively powerful painting with an inherent wonderful and enigmatic mystery. It is a lush composition and a memorable scene. In his poem, ‘Childhood’, 1913, Russell has demonstrated his interest in the world of childhood and depicting children in his paintings; “We are pools whose depths are told/ You are like a mystic fountain/ Issuing ever pure and cold/ From the hollows of the mountain/ We are men by anguish taught/ To distinguish false from true/ Higher wisdom we have not/ But a joy within guides you”. There is an idealisation of children in his work and although he sees adults as experienced in life he does not feel that this equates with higher wisdom and he refers to the anguish caused by the teachings adults receive. If we apply the line ‘a joy within guides you’ to this painting, it is clear that the child carefully exploring the pool epitomises this sentiment.

Marianne O’Kane Boal €12000 - 16000

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20 Paul Henry, RHA, 1877-1958 ACHILL COTTAGE, LOUGH CORRIB Oil on canvas, 14" x 16" (35.5 x 41cm), signed.

Provenance: The Fine Art Society, London; Private Collection, U.K. Exhibited: London, The Fine Art Society, Four Irish Artists: J.H. Craig, Paul Henry, E.L. Lawrenson, J. Crampton Walker, March 1928, cat. no.55.

Literature: Numbered 1337 in S.B. Kennedy’s ongoing catalogue of Paul Henry’s oeuvre.

This is a fine Paul Henry at the height of his powers. When he first went to Achill Island in 1910 it was the people of the island which most attracted his attention. But from around 1915 he turned to the landscape itself. Later he wrote, “One of my favourite walks was to Saddle Head where I could lie on the turf and look out over Blacksod Bay and the ‘Stags of Broadhave’, and beyond that to the loneliest part of Ireland” (Paul Henry, An Irish Portrait, Batsford Ltd., London, 1988, p.81).

Dr S B Kennedy (2019) €60000 - 90000

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21 Jack Butler Yeats, RHA, 1871-1957 THE STREET PERFORMER (1947) Oil on canvas, 18" x 24" (46 x 61cm), signed.

Provenance: Waddington Galleries, Montreal, 1961; J. L. McKay-Clements; Mr and Mrs J. L. McKay-Clements, Toronto; Private Collection, Ireland.

Exhibited: 1947 Dublin (2); 1961 Montreal (15) (repro)

Literature: ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings’ by Hilary Pyle, No 883, Vol II, which states: “A marvelous image of a juggler in the dark street, gyrating bottles in the air. A horse and rider, seen in the foreground – enhanced, like the juggler’s torso, by the light breaking through the smoky dark blue atmosphere – turn away from sight.

The oil looks back to the watercolour of 1899, ‘The Street Juggler’ (Pyle Watercolours, 178)”.

This late work shows a juggler performing in the streets of a country town. He strides along conspicuously, with his arms extended as he throws glass bottles in the air above his head. To the left two figures look on, leaning against the wall of a nearby structure. A grand municipal building dominates the background. In the right foreground the dramatic silhouette of a large horse and rider is evident, the body and head of the animal is clearly articulated by the strong light that penetrates the scene from the upper left side of the composition. It is sculpted out of a ghostly blue silver pigment. The horse and rider stand in front of a house, the roof of which is painted in deep red and orange, reflecting the sunlight.

From its window a figure looks out.

As in some of his other late works such as ‘Above the Fair’ (1946, National Gallery of Ireland) or ‘Grief’ (1951, National Gallery of Ireland), Yeats transforms a mundane West of Ireland town into a magical and bizarre place where, in this case, the arrival of a roving performer suspends daily life momentarily. Pyle relates this painting to Yeats’s 1899 watercolour, ‘The Street Juggler’, which depicts a performer in a more conventional daylight setting but where he also disrupts the normality of country town life. In ‘The Street Performer’, nature seems to conspire with the flamboyant entertainer to create a The Street Juggler, 1899 tempestuous and overcast sky that obscures form and converts the town and its inhabitants into an ambiguous and ominous setting in which anything is possible.

The surface of the painting is built up in a multiplicity of brushstrokes. The horse and rider, and the juggler are formed out of thick impasto, while parts of the sky and the darkened shadows of the streetscape are painted in thin, opaque pigment.

The energy of the performer and the tension of the dark stormy sky and the deserted streets emanate throughout the composition, through the vibrant reflections of light and shade across its surface and in the dynamic changes in the texture of the painting itself.

Roisin Kennedy, May 2020 €180000 - 240000

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22 Roderic O’Conor, 1860-1940 PEONIES AND IRIS IN A VASE AND A BOWL OF FRUIT (1916) Oil on canvas 21½" x 18" (54.6 x 45.7cm), signed top right, ‘O’Conor / 16’; stamped verso ‘atelier / O’CONOR’.

Provenance: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O’Conor, 7 February 1956; Christie’s, London, 10 March 1961, lot 123 (bought by Low); Sotheby’s, London, 15 April 1964, lot 69; Ben Goldstone, Belfast; Private collection.

Exhibited: Ulster Museum, Belfast, ‘Recent Acquisitions and Loans’, March - April 1974, no. 18.

Literature: Jonathan Benington, ‘Roderic O’Conor: a Biography with a Catalogue of his Work’, Dublin 1992, p.214, no. 204.

Notwithstanding the ravages of the First World War, and occasions when the pounding of heavy German artillery reached the ears of Parisian inhabitants, O’Conor continued to paint still lifes and figurative subjects within the comparative safety of his capacious courtyard studio in the Latin Quarter. His palette became more subdued, perhaps reflecting the impact of wartime austerity, whilst his application of pigment gradually moved away from the painterly handling of the 1890s and 1900s towards thicker, more textured surfaces that relied extensively on deft strokes of the palette knife. This more sobre approach to reality was part of the general zeitgeist, however, for it bore similarities with technical trends apparent in the work of other School of Paris artists during these years, such as Dunoyer de Segonzac, André Derain and Pinchus Kremegne, all of whom were personal acquaintances of O’Conor. The practice of art in the capital had lost the seemingly unstoppable appetite for innovation that characterised the pre-war years. Amongst those who were too old for active service the change was often manifested by a return to the more traditional values espoused by the great masters of the past.

In O’Conor’s case, the example of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was often uppermost in his mind, notably the so-called ‘Kitchen’ still lifes featuring everyday household objects and foodstuffs that he painted 150 years earlier. The Irishman was similarly interested in evoking texture with the aid of subtly modulated tones, particularly in tabletop still lifes such as the present work, which he would set up in a corner near a window in such a way that the dark to light phasing of the background would be reversed in the objects placed in front of it. In ‘Peonies and Iris in a Vase and a Bowl of Fruit’, the upper surfaces of the organic forms and the right-hand side of the vase, catch the full strength of daylight entering the studio through an adjacent window. However, this radiance quickly transitions to much darker colours in the shaded areas.

Never one to succumb to a formula, O’Conor has mitigated the strong chiaroscuro of this work by using a fine brush to capture the delicacy of the iris stems and blooms, in addition to deploying feathered brushwork to render the mid-tones of the vase.

O’Conor’s new approach, amounting to a type of expressive realism, continued well into the 1920s. It would attract both personal and institutional admirers, with examples being secured by Somerset Maugham, Roger Fry, Alden Brooks and the French state.

Jonathan Benington €40000 - 60000

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23 Sir John Lavery, RA, RSA, RHA, 1856-1941 ON THE SHORE, CO ANTRIM Oil on canvas, 6½" x 10¾" (16.5cm x 26.5cm), signed; signed, inscribed with title & dated 1887 verso.

It has been suggested this is a view of Ballygally Beach.

In the summer of 1887 John Lavery was recalled to Ulster to paint a large plein air group portrait of the Smiley family who lived at Drumalis, Larne, in county Antrim. Smiley was co-owner of The Northern Whig, and through his wife, his business interests extended to the Coats, Clark, Kerr thread-making conglomerate that came together in Paisley in 1896. Lavery’s grand project, however, did not go well, and from two other extant small oil sketches, we can infer that the skies were unpredictable and sometimes overcast. The painter, nevertheless, managed to complete a portrait of his patron’s four-yearold son (unlocated), which was shown in the winter exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1887.

He and Hugh Houston Smiley remained in contact and the artist returned to Larne during August 1890, expressing his enthusiasm in an undated letter to his friend, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, and suggesting that he, James Guthrie and other Glasgow School painters might join him. Although this did not happen, Smiley enlisted George Walton, the architect brother of fellow ‘Glasgow Boy’, EA Walton, to redesign the interiors of the Larne house in 1893.

The present small sketch which dates from Lavery’s first sojourn, can nevertheless be placed securely on the rocky county Antrim shore because of the unique character of a coastline that features black volcanic basalt boulders. Thrown up over four hundred million years ago these relics of lava layers, broke through the limestone crust and can be seen in the cliffs and sands of the area. They proved exciting to geologists in the first post-Darwinian age, in indicating that the world was much older than the Biblical creationists of the day had calculated.

Although he would return regularly to Ulster in later years, these tiny Larne beach scenes were among the first pictures painted of Lavery’s native province.

Kenneth McConkey, 2020 €10000 - 15000

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24 Jack Butler Yeats, RHA, 1871-1957 THE LITTLE MERCHANT (1925) Oil on board, 9" x 14" (22.8 x 35.6cm), signed.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist by John J. Horgan, Cork, in 1941, and by descent; with Pyms Gallery, London, where purchased by Jimmy Benson, OBE, on 30 September 1987 (label verso); Christies, 2020, lot 140.

Exhibited: 1925 Dublin (3); 1926 London (21); 1927 Birmingham (19); 1945 Dublin National Loan (51); 1987 London (46) (col. repro).

Literature: ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings’ by Hilary Pyle, No 292.

According to Hilary Pyle, this painting depicts a scene in Gort, Co. Galway that the artist witnessed. A young girl is being congratulated on her selling skills by two elderly women1. The former is seated on a box with a small table of apples laid out in front of her. She is dressed in a black woollen shawl and long blue dress and appears very much as an adult. The women, by comparison, seem tall, elongated, and slender, their bodies covered by thick shawls. Behind them, a deserted townscape extends with two shopfronts visible across the street. The painted signage and large display windows are in sharp contrast to the simple stall of the apple seller. To the right the view opens onto a wide intersecting street on which a man and a donkey make their way, indicative of the beginning of early morning activity.

The paint is broadly handled, with the figures denoted by fluid strokes that generalise their features. The cool morning air is conveyed through the dominant use of blue tones on the architecture in the streetscape to the right, while tinges of warm yellow suggest sunlight falling on the ground behind the women. Bright red tones enhance the colour range, connecting the red skirt of one of the women, with the apple table and the painted cart frame to the right.

Yeats painted several scenes of flower girls and fruit sellers in the 1920s. Many are based on sketches that he made on his walks around Dublin and his travels around the Irish countryside. These works, like this one, reveal his empathy towards these people, often women, who made a precarious living on the streets. The lone figure of the little merchant, the object of curiosity, conveys the isolation of her work. She may be selling the produce of her own household. In the 1920s apples were not imported as today and their limited season ran from late August to December, when they were considered a treat for children and adults alike. The fact that the girl has secured her stall so early in the day suggests her determination and need to make money.

Roisin Kennedy, May 2020

€70000 - 100000 1 Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: a catalogue raisonné of his oil paintings, (London: Deutsch, 1992), I, p. 265.

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25 Mary Swanzy, HRHA, 1904-1969 THE SPANISH FRUIT SELLER Oil on canvas, 19¾" x 24" (50.2 x 61cm), signed and dated ’42.

At a time when Ireland was steeped in conservatism, especially in the visual arts, Dublin-born Mary Swanzy travelled widely, absorbing modernist ideas that placed her at the forefront of the Irish avant-garde. She studied in Paris at the point where Cubism was beginning to make its mark but she identified more strongly with a later generation of artists, spearheaded by Delaunay. After 1914 she exhibited regularly at both the Paris Salon des Indépendants and the Beaux Arts, and by 1946 was included in shows that included artists like Chagall. Although her style changed over the decades, with Cubism and Surrealism strongly shaping certain periods, her work is always distinctly recognisable.

Swanzy has a delicate, lightness of touch, overlaying thin layers of pigment to create surfaces that have a glowing translucence.

This characteristic is one of the appealing aspects of Spanish Fruit Seller. Never muddy, there is a fresh purity in her colours, even in the shadows. The artist’s mastery of colour is exceptional: although this picture is based on a seemingly simple scheme of primary hues (blue, yellow and red), she has toned them down so that the result is softened, subtle and sophisticated.

Academic drawing skill underpins this painting but Swanzy stops it from taking over. There is great freedom in her brushstrokes, a looseness which gives it a modern, almost casual feel. The composition is masterful, with limbs and hat cut off at the edges giving the painting the feeling of immediacy you’d find in a snapshot. The composition is anchored by strong verticals: table legs, fruit seller, donkey limbs, grapes, tree. Swirling around these Swanzy has introduced a number of curving arcs, culminating in the fabulous basket of fruit.

Every aspect of the painting is designed to satisfy the viewer. There is a luminosity, a ‘rightness’ and a sense of harmony that is not easily achieved by a lesser artist.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €15000 - 20000

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26 Tony O’Malley, HRHA, 1913-2003

MAGUEZ

Oil on board, 48" x 36" (122 x 91.5cm), signed, signed & inscribed verso, dated 1992.

Provenance: Taylor Galleries, Dublin (label verso).

Exhibited: ‘Tony O’Malley’, Taylor Galleries, 11 Nov-3 Dec 2005, full-page catalogue illustration.

From 1988 through 1999 Tony O’Malley and his wife Jane began spending part of each winter in Lanzarote where, in rural Maguez, this picture was painted. The sombre tones of his Irish paintings have given way to a warmer palette, a celebration of his sun drenched surroundings. Always sensitive to ‘place’, O’Malley was enthralled with the brilliant light, warmth, and bright colours of these tropical surroundings.

We often detect characteristic motifs, like birds and feathers, appearing under the guise of abstract shapes. An eye of one exotic bird is suggested in the large arc-like shape that dominates the lower half of the painting, while the eye of another one peeks out on the upper right. An O’Malley painting is a sensory experience enhanced by the surface of the board which has been deliberately scored, scraped and scratched to enhance its tactile quality.

‘Maguez’ is an exceptionally bold composition dominated by a column of brilliant red. O’Malley has set the composition in motion by pulling our eyes to the upper right in a sharp diagonal line, and setting this against a dramatic thrust to the left in the lower half of the picture. The two black eyes are the key to it, creating dramatic visual tension. There is also a sense of internal harmony in O’Malley’s work which he achieves by subtle repetition of shapes. The circles are echoed in a large red dot near the bottom of the painting, while parallel lines that suggest feathers reappear throughout.

Like in so many of his paintings, Maguez draws on O’Malley’s totality of experience, the seeing plus the feeling. He looks, feels, digests and then remembers a sensation, using this ‘inscape’ as the starting point for a visually satisfying and, in this case, forceful abstract composition.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €20000 - 30000

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27 Louis le Brocquy, HRHA, 1916-2012 LIFE STUDY (in 15 parts) Oil on canvas, 48" x 65" (122 x 165m), signed & dated 1970 verso, opus no. C1766 (label verso).

Provenance: Blain Gallery, London (label verso).

‘Life Study’ is a rare work, unusual in the way it forms a brief transition between the ancestral heads that precede it and the familiar portrait heads (Joyce, WB Yeats, etc.) that dominated the following years. While the ancestral heads were a search for a more general sense of human presence, the essence of “being”, the title of this painting suggests that le Brocquy has begun to examine someone in particular, a ‘life study’ resulting in what is possibly a self-portrait of the artist himself.

Le Brocquy was conscious of the limitations of a static portrait and here we see how he has used multiple aspects to better express the ever-changing external appearance of his subject. In this painting we get multiple fragments of the figure, as if they’re drifting in and out of consciousness, as in memory. The figure reveals itself slowly, tempting the poetic imagination of the viewer to reconstruct it.

The surface of this painting is so wonderfully seductive – the subtle transitions from light to dark within each panel create an ethereal effect. Although the piece is minimal, it certainly isn’t soul-less. At its heart, there is a soft painterly approach that relieves its austerity and appeals to the senses. The muted palette of whites and greys is enlivened by a controlled use of glistening jewel-like colours. The composition holds together beautifully, with all the elements held firmly in the same picture plane. This is a haunting picture that has real staying power.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €100000 - 150000

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28 Frederick Edward McWilliam, RA, 1909-1992 SCREEN, 1961 Bronze, 15" x 19½" (38 x 49cm), signed with initials & numbered 2/5.

Provenance: Private Collection, USA.

Literature: Roland Penrose, McWilliam, London, 1964, no.83, illustrated; Derry Journal, 7 April 1987; Denise Ferran and Valerie Holman, The Sculpture of F.E. McWilliam, Farnham, 2012, no.223, p.132, illustrated.

Exhibited: London, Waddington Galleries, F.E. McWilliam, 1961; Belfast, Ulster Museum, F.E. McWilliam Retrospective, Arts Council of Ireland touring exhibition, 1981, no.45 (illustrated in exh. cat., p.44); Londonderry, Gordon Gallery, 1987; Dublin, Solomon Gallery, 1995; Banbridge, The F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio, F.E. McWilliam at Banbridge, 2008 (illustrated in exh. cat., p.72); Drogheda, Highlanes Gallery, F.E. McWilliam at Banbridge, 2009.

McWilliam was so pleased with Screen that he insisted on its inclusion in his 1981 retrospective exhibition, organised by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, at the Ulster Museum. He made this work halfway through his long, productive career, in 1961. This was one of his most productive periods and a time when his international reputation was given recognition in the Unites States through his inclusion in the exhibition “British Artist Craftsmen” circulated by the Smithsonian Institute and shortly after his inclusion as one of “Ten British Sculptors” at the Sâo Paulo Biennale in Brazil.

This exhibition was subsequently shown by the British Council, in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Venezuela. As a consequence, McWilliam was described by the critic and artist, Roland Penrose as “an inventor of styles” and although this, is to a large extent, true, he was, nonetheless, moved by the spirit of his time and influenced by his immediate European predecessors, Alberto Giacometti and Germaine Richtier. He was also a major figure amongst the group of British Sculptors who emerged in the post 2nd World War years, which included Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler, Kenneth Armitage and Bernard Meadows. They evolved an idiom, which was the sculptural equivalent of abstract painting of the time. Works were primarily cast in bronze and preoccupied with variations in surface textures. Indeed McWilliam frequently claimed that he learned more from painters than from sculptors.

In 1964, the Tate Gallery in London presented an exhibition entitled “Painting and Sculpture of a Decade 54/64” and McWilliam threw a party for friends in the garden of his Holland Park studio/home, following the opening.

The photograph he took of the group included the five artists Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Bryan Winter, William Scott and Roger Hilton who were included in the exhibition and who were all closely associated with the generation which gathered in St. Ives, Cornwall when it attracted international attention in the late 1950’s and could, at that time, been justifiably described as a world art centre. McWilliam has carefully positioned Moet et Chandon bottles and close by, two casually placed Gitanes cigarette packets, one open, one closed. On the white gabled background of his home, McWilliam has displayed his low relief bronze Bilateral Relief, 1959, on two long legs, more as a painting than a sculpture.

Screen is an important example of McWilliam’s work of this period and it displays abstract forms with a play of voids against solids. It encapsulates satisfying contrasts of rough painterly textures as opposed to smooth sculptural surfaces, much in keeping with the period practice.

Brian Ferran, June 2020 €15000 - 20000

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29 John Behan, RHA, b.1938 FAMINE SHIP Bronze, 21" high x 21" wide (53.5 x 53.5cm), signed.

“Say the name John Behan and you see the bulls of Cooley and the Children of Lir and the bittern of Cathal Bui, the birds of Aengus, the boats of Broighter and the Ostfold Boat, the Ghost Boat and even the Boar of Ben Bulben” (Seamus Heaney).

John Behan’s great ‘Coffin Ship’ stands at the base of Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo, the rigging laden with the skeleton bodies of lost emigrants, to remind us of those who didn’t survive the crossing to America.

The Famine Ship Series carries an enormous depth of history and in 2000 the Irish Government commissioned a 26 by 24 foot bronze, entitled “Arrival”, that now stands in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It shows passengers disembarking the ship towards the East River.

€5000 - 7000

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30 John Behan, RHA, b.1938 BIRDS IN FLIGHT Bronze, 22" high, excluding base, (56cm), signed & dated 1982, edition no. 1 of a series.

John Behan was a founding member of the New Artists’ group in 1962 and the Project Art Centre in 1967. A sculptor of international stature, he became a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1990, as well as being a member of Aosdána. Behan has been credited with playing a major part in the development of sculpture in Ireland throughout the last forty years and has had many public commissions. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in 2000.

€2500 - 3500

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31† George Campbell, RHA, 1917-1979 SPANISH INTERIOR Oil on board 51¼" x 23¼" (135.3 x 59.1cm).

Provenance: the artist’s estate (label verso).

Using the draped curtain in the background and the curved line of the chair back, Campbell manages to compress your focus so that the eye stops on the main subject matter, the table top, which is dramatically flipped up towards the viewer.

Writing in the Artist magazine in 1969, Campbell described his abstract works as a “kind of visual music and a series of shapes and textures and colours. Any abstract thing I paint is painted from my backlog of things.

If I have done by job properly, a painting should have thousands of terms of reference.”

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€4000 - 6000

32† John B. Vallely, b.1941 DIARMUID AND GRAINNE Oil on canvas, 50" x 40" (127 x 101.6cm), signed & inscribed verso.

One of the great Romantic legends of Ireland is that of Diarmuid and Grainne. Grainne, was the most beautiful woman in Ireland and Diarmuid was Fionn MacCool’s best warrior.

“I recognise the painting from around 1960/61 or thereabouts. I had an exhibition of paintings, mostly on Irish Mythology and an American bought them and they were exhibited in New York.

Over the years they turn up.

Looking at this I’m trying to remember who was influencing me at that time – maybe Auerbach whose work I’ve always liked.” (John B Valley, 2020)

€4000 - 6000

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33 Gerard Dillon, 1916-1971 THE SPACE CIRCUS Oil on canvas, 36" x 50" (91.5 x 127cm), signed, signed & inscribed verso.

Exhibited: Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Jan-Feb 1973, Cat. No. 86 (label verso).

In the mid 1950s Dillon experienced the significant changes in the vibrant art scene in London which saw representational art being replaced by colour and gesture to evoke strong emotions. Post war anxiety had passed and a new era of confidence saw an unleashing of various art movements with many new artist’s styles vying for media attention. The tragic death in 1956 of the Avant-garde American Expressionist painter, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) from an automobile accident catapulted American Abstraction into the media spotlight which helped to shift focus of the art world from Europe to the United States. Dillon’s friend Gerard Keenan suggested to this writer that Dillon’s style in the early 1960s was most likely influenced by the proliferation of different positions and movements that emerged from European and American abstract painters such as Jackson Pollock at that time.

Exhibited at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1962, ‘The Space Circus’ was among a number of works painted in Dillon’s basement studio at Abbey Road in London in preparation for his solo exhibition at the Dawson Gallery in in Dublin in Spring, 1962 which included 29 listed works and several others but were too late to be included in the catalogue. ‘The Space Circus’ and three other works were probably held back around this time to be included in the annual exhibition of Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) a few months later.

In 1958 Dillon made his first steps to move away from his idyllic Connemara scenes when he exhibited an abstract painting ‘Goodbye Old Paint’ at the annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Marian Burleigh reviewed the 1962 IELA exhibition and suggested Dillon’s, ‘The Space Circus’ “carries us into a twentieth century world of fantasy” (Irish Press 3.8.62). But abandoning his traditional landscapes was not an easy transition. From the late 1950s Dillon’s London dealer, Victor Waddington had established a market for his romantic west of Ireland scenes at his brother’s gallery in Montreal, Canada. While Dillon was showing his abstract works in Dublin in 1962, George Waddington held a joint show, Two Primitives reflecting Dillon’s vision of Ireland with a Canadian primitive painter. Dillon remained focused however, and was inspired by the support he received by his new patron, Sir Basil Goulding, who opened his exhibition at the Dawson Gallery in 1962. Sir Basil Goulding was Chairman of the newly founded CIAS (The Contemporary Art Society) and had purchased several works from Dillon’s exhibitions in the early 1960’s.

Dillon’s new style also saw him moving away from painting on a small scale. The new larger non-figurative canvases reflected the artist’s confidence during the radical departure in the visual arts. His pictures incorporated string, wax, sand, coins, wood and often depicted animal shapes rendered down from boiling leather gloves, handbags and boots sourced from local dumps or at the famed bric-a-brac stalls at Campden Town market. ‘The Space Circus’ seems centered on the balance of floating shapes on cut material pointing to the influence of Lucio Fontana’s ‘Slash Series’ which Fontana developed from the mid 1950s when he used egg shapes and open cuts to create a sense of illusion and depth. In ‘The Space Circus’ the egg shape on the right, circles, paint spots, and the illusion of a slashed canvas may be a play on Fontana’s ‘Spatial Concept.’ Coincidentally, Fontana and 11 other Italian painters exhibited with Dillon at the 1962 IELA exhibition. These abstract paintings allowed Dillon to plunge himself into the spontaneous act of creativity and abandon imposed principles or rules in painting or what he described as the ‘formality of a painting’ which had characterised his Connemara landscapes. Dillon’s success between 1960-1962 resulted in his work being shown at the Guggenheim International Award in Washington in 1960 and in Rome at the Marzotto International exhibition in 1962 where he represented Ireland alongside William Scott and Louis le Brocquy.

Interviewed in 1964 on the subject of abstract art, Dillon replied, “Abstract art is just a way to make people see that art has nothing to do with telling anything of a literary nature. It might make people accept a painting for what it is and not what they think it should be, all full of a ‘meaning’ in the wordy sense… Abstract art might make them [People] look and see, not glance and ask” (Irish Times 23/9/64, p.11).

Karen Reihill €14000 - 18000

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34 Frank McKelvey, RHA, 1895-1974 A COUNTRY MARKET Oil on canvas, 18" x 24" (45.7 x 61cm), signed.

Frank McKelvey began his career as an apprentice lithographer and poster designer with David Allen & Sons. He went on to study at the Belfast College of Art. McKelvey received numerous awards while a student for freehand drawing in outline, drawing from the model, and drawing from the antique. He first exhibited with the Royal Hibernian Academy at the age of 23 and he subsequently exhibited there annually for the rest of his life.

According to John Hewitt, writing in The Arts in Ulster, 89; “In landscape he maintains the Constable-Impressionist mode, to me most significant in his rendering of evening light on level estuaries…” The influence of Constable on McKelvey’s work is demonstrated but this has perhaps been filtered through the work of artists such as Walter Osbourne or Dermod O’Brien who subscribed to an English tradition of plein-air painting as Kennedy (1993:9) has argued. He explains; “his characteristic approach to landscape was to capture the essential visual effect of the scene, rather than to emphasize aspects such as the structure, mood or atmosphere. Yet he succeeded brilliantly in capturing the character of the Irish landscape”. While this observation of McKelvey’s approach to capturing the ‘essential visual effect’ is true, I would argue that through this method, McKelvey was indeed emphasizing the structure, mood and atmosphere, albeit as a natural and organic result of his focus on the essential visual effect of the scene. He was meticulous in his method and adept at structuring canvases coherently and aesthetically to create a pleasing atmosphere that invites the viewer’s engagement, again Kennedy (1993:9) has observed; the even film of paint and naturalistic use of light combine with the treatment of the figures to express the apparent ease of the artist’s technical ability’. McKelvey’s subjects are predominantly land and seascapes from Donegal and Northern Ireland.

McKelvey is a master of compositional orchestration and this painting is no exception; “the clear division of the composition into distinct areas of recession – the foreground containing the narrative and darker in tone, contrasting with the sunlit middle distance” (Kennedy, 1993). While it is true that McKelvey’s paintings followed a very definite organizational procedure, they never became formulaic and each painting has its own interest and appeal. Market and fair days feature often in McKelvey’s oeuvre. He has painted ‘Fair Day, Camlough’ in 1924, ‘Market Scene’, c1935, among others and his last known work on the subject is ‘A Country Market’, 1971. This scene differs from his typical approach with the architecture of the towns/villages as an immediate backdrop for the action of the fair. Here we see the two-storey buildings of the village relegated somewhat to the right middle distance. They provide a context but it is very much secondary to the action in the foreground. This is a fine rendition of a market scene. The cattle are beautifully captured from all sides, both sitting and standing and the artist demonstrates his mastery of depicting animals, a strong link with Constable, who he admired. The principle action occurs to the left foreground where two dealers are depicted in conversation with a woman dressed in black. In the right foreground cattle are being led towards the fair and a father and son turn to the action occurring at the centre of the painting while walking towards the viewer. It is a dynamic and active depiction of the fair yet it also demonstrates McKelvey’s characteristic compositional knowledge of avoiding an overcrowded composition. To counterbalance the hubs of fair activity at the centre of the canvas, the left and right foreground, McKelvey ensured the remainder of his work is simpler. The sky is neutral and the mountains are hazily delineated in a manner akin to that of Paul Henry. The overall painting is bathed in a relatively bright light highlighting the drama of market day.

Marianne O’Kane Boal €8000 - 12000

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35† Basil Blackshaw, HRHA, HRUA, 1932-2016 HEAD FOR HEANEY Mixed media, 24" x 20" (61 x 51cm), signed; signed & inscribed verso.

Provenance: Ex Collection of Antoinette and Patrick J Murphy.

Seamus Heaney and Basil Blackshaw were good friends. Heaney once described Blackshaw’s work as “the earth and its creatures, its game cocks and blood horses, its green sward and its glary sheughs, its imaginative writers and its sexual beauties, its lurchers and its loved ones, all these things have been richly Basilised, as it were, Blackshawed into pigment, turned into an element that is as rich as the muddy banks of the Bann valley and as recognisable as Basil’s own gleeful personality”.

€3000 - 5000

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36 Tony O’Malley, HRHA, 1913-2003 LA GERIA, LANZAROTE Oil on board, 48" x 24" (122 x 61cm), signed; signed, inscribed & dated 1990/1991 verso, opus no. 6336.

Provenance: RHA, 2001 (label verso).

€12000 - 18000

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37† Cecil Maguire, RHA, RUA, 1930-2020 FIRST RACE, OMEY STRAND, CONNEMARA Oil on board, 21" x 19" (53.4 x 48.3cm), signed, signed, inscribed & dated ’02 verso.

€3000 - 5000

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38 Peter Curling, b.1955 THE PADDOCK AT KILFEACLE, THE SCARTEEN POINT TO POINT Oil on canvas, 30" x 40" (76 x 99cm), signed.

Peter Curling has for a long time been Ireland’s leading equestrian painter. He lives in Tipperary and has focused his painting on horses and the Irish landscape. This work is of the Paddock at nearby Kilfeacle, a busy well attended Point to Point that looks on to the Galtee Mountains. Here the horses are on their way out from the parade ring, all hopes and wagers still alive.

€20000 - 30000

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39 William Crozier, HRHA, 1930-2011 NOVEMBER JANUARY Oil on canvas, 32" x 40" (81 x 102cm), signed & inscribed verso.

William Crozier was born in Scotland in 1930 to Irish parents and studied at Glasgow School of Art between 1949-53.

Though he initially moved to Paris he soon left for Dublin and London and settled in Ireland. The greatest influence on his work is theatre and stage design, visible through his use of lighting, scale and to a degree his interpretive approach. He was best known as a lyrical landscape artist with his main site of work being his home in West Cork.

Of his work he said in 2002 “Exile has been my life. I have always felt in a permanent state of exile. And that’s what my work is about. It’s about a sense of loss, a problem of identity, a longing for a world that perhaps never existed”.

€10000 - 15000

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40 Tony O’Malley, HRHA, 1913-2003 WINTER PATTERN Oil on board, 42" x 22" (107 x 56cm), signed with initials & dated 1/85, signed, inscribed & dated 1985 verso, opus no.774.

Provenance: Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin (label verso); sold these rooms 12th April 2005 (lot 142).

€8000 - 12000 63

41 Letitia Marion (May) Hamilton, RHA, 1878-1964 THE HAMILTON FAMILY AT HAMWOOD HOUSE, LUCAN, CO DUBLIN Oil on canvas, 20" x 24" (51 x 61cm).

Although Letitia Hamilton studied under Orpen, her loose handling of paint and distinctive use of thick impasto align her more closely to Roderic O’Conor and to French artists like Dufy. She travelled widely on the continent, primarily Italy and France, opening her eyes to modernist styles of painting. Against the backdrop of aesthetic conservatism at home, she joined artists like Jack B Yeats, Paul Henry and Mary Swanzy in founding the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920 so that more impressionist and avant-garde artists would have a place to exhibit.

Hamilton came from a long line of landed gentry, with her ancestor Charles Hamilton completing the construction of Hamwood, in Dunboyne, Co Meath, in 1777. Letitia and her artist sister Eva were both born and reared at Hamwood, which makes this painting of particular interest. Letitia’s subject matter often gives glimpses into aspects of affluent country life often overlooked by other artists. Here we see Hamwood as the backdrop for lively social interaction, with ladies in big hats gathered on the terrace, presumably enjoying the view and aromas of a lush summer garden. A girl seems to be sketching on the steps, while someone approaches with an armful of flowers, dogs playing at her feet.

Hamilton was interested in capturing the atmosphere, the movement, giving an overall ‘impression’ rather than a tightly painted description. The artist also wanted to make the surfaces of her paintings a rich tapestry of texture and colour. Her paint is has a juicy, luscious feel, which is particularly evident in the treatment of the flowers and the sky, but is also evident in the façade. The building provides the perfect foil for the riot of foliage in the foreground. Hamilton uses a very subtle colour palette of pale pinks, faded minty tones and delicious creams but kicks up the visual excitement with spots of red, blue and purple. The effect is spontaneous, lively and vibrant.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020

€8000 - 12000

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42 Barrie Cooke, HRHA, 1931-2014 THE LILY, SWEENEY ENTANGLED (DIPTYCH) Oil on canvas, 56" x 38" (142.3 x 96.5cm) (each part), signed, inscribed & dated 85/87 verso.

Barrie Cooke was one of Ireland’s leading abstract expressionist artists. He was held in exceptionally high regard among his peers and by a large number of collectors and art lovers. He was known for the vivid immediacy of his work.

For him the encounter with the subject, be it fish, human being or landscape, imposed something like a sacred duty on the artist: not just to be true to what you see, but to be true to how you feel it in your nervous system. “I think there has to be one thing in painting – energy, vitality, that’s 99 per cent of it,” he said in a 1998 interview with Niall MacMonagle.

Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and John Montague were good friends. He worked on collaborative projects with all three, including a 1985 illustrated edition of Heaney’s ‘Sweeney Astray’. Robert Andrew Parker, Camille Souter and Nick Miller numbered among his close artist friends.

In 1975 he raised money for a trip to the rainforest of Malaysian Borneo, where he spent several months. The trip had a dramatically liberating effect on his work: “the only time in my life where the paintings almost made themselves”. From the late 1980s, New Zealand, which he visited many times, played a similar role. Its vast, pristine expanses counterpointed his growing preoccupation with environmental degradation in rural Ireland, where he painted scenes of pollution.

A founder member of Independent Artists and Aosdána, he served on the boards of the Douglas Hyde Gallery and the Butler Gallery. He exhibited regularly at the Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, and, from 1986, at the Kerlin Gallery. There were surveys and retrospectives at IMMA, the Haags Gemeentemuseum, the Model, Sligo, The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. His work is in most public collections.

(Ref: Irish Times, 2014)

€8000 - 12000 66

43 Rowan Gillespie, b.1953 CONVICT WOMAN Bronze, 18" high (46cm).

From 1803 to 1853, almost 13,000 Irish convict women, together with 2,000 children, were transported to Tasmania. The Footsteps Towards Freedom project was inspired by the experiences of those who made the journey and were imprisoned at Hobart’s historic Cascades Female Factory site.

Three women and two children were immortalised in bronze sculptures by Rowan Gillespie, on Hobart’s Macquarie Wharf – the arrival point for the convicts. Working in isolation for weeks, he modeled the figures on the living descendants of convict women and children and used photographs and 3-D scans to help craft the likeness of Tasmanian models in his purpose-built foundry. This work is of a young woman accused of stealing cattle.

“It sounds sort of stupid but I talk to the sculptures, I live with them and I have this thing that I really believe that I know them as the process happens, so you get very emotional,” he said.

Four sculptures are installed on Hobart’s historic Macquarie Wharf – the arrival point for many women and children who came to Van Diemen’s Land. Each tells a different story of the hardship of life for women and children in the penal colony.

President Michael D Higgins at the unveiling ceremony said the women were to be admired.

“The crimes for which they were transported were often petty crimes, it would seem now – the theft of food or a few coins, a watch or shawl stolen to try to sustain a starving family – desperate acts of destitute individuals,” he said.

€10000 - 15000

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44 Anthony Scott, RUA, b.1968 FOAL Bronze, 18 ½" high (47cm), signed, ed. 1/6.

Anthony Scott lives and works in Blacklion, Co. Cavan, just across the border from his hometown of Enniskillen. His animals and figures draw upon Celtic mythology and literature, their expressions and stances imbued with human characteristics invoking heroism and passion. They are each open to interpretation and at once animal, divine, spirit, male, female, depending on which story one might choose to recount.

Scott has been a regular annual participant at the Royal Hibernian Academy and has exhibited extensively in Ireland, the UK and at numerous international art fairs. In May 2011, HM Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a new sculpture entitled ‘See the Stars’ by Anthony Scott at the Irish National Stud in Kildare.

His work is also included in the public collections of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Barbican Centre, London, the Crafts Council of Ireland, the US Ambassador’s Residence in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, Kelly’s Hotel Rosslare and in numerous important private collections. He is represented by Solomon Fine Art in Dublin (ref. solomonfineart.ie).

€5000 - 7000

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45 Anthony Scott, RUA, b.1968 WARRIOR BLUE FACE Bronze, 29¾" (75.5cm) high.

€4000 - 6000

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46† Eilis O’Connell, b.1953 NUNIVAK VOYAGE Painted steel, 136 x 120 x 10cm, dated 1985.

Exhibited: Exhibition of Visual Arts, Limerick City Gallery (1985) and ‘Steel Quarry’, Douglas Hyde Gallery (1986).

Eilis O’Connell was born in Derry. She studied at the Crawford School of Art, Cork, and Massachusetts College of Art, Boston.

She won the GPA Award for Emerging Artists in 1981, a fellowship at The British School at Rome in 1983-1984 and a P.S.I. Fellowship for New York from the Irish Arts Council.

Her work utilises the combination of materials and organic debris from her environment and she has represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1982 and the Sao Paolo Biennale in 1985. In 2002 her large bronze, Unfold, was lent by the Cass Foundation to the Venice Biennale and her smaller sculptures were shown at the Guggenheim Museum, also in Venice.

O’Connell is a founder Director of the National Sculpture Factory in Cork, a former member of the Arts Council of Ireland, a member of Aosdána and a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

€2000 - 4000

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47 Eilis O’Connell, b.1953 STEEL QUARRY (1976) Steel and paper, (197 x 43cm).

Provenance: Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 1986, where purchased by the present owner.

€1000 - 1500

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48 Martin Mooney, b.1960 DUBLIN LIFFEY Oil on board, 24" x 36" (61 x 91.4cm), signed & dated 2020, signed, inscribed & dated 2020 verso.

€6000 - 9000

49 Peter Collis, HRHA, 1929-2012 LANDSCAPE Oil on canvas, 10" x 10" (25.4 x 25.4cm), signed.

€600 - 900 72

Patrick Scott, HRHA, 1921-2014 The following works (lots 50-53) come from a private collection, acquired directly from the artist’s family and by descent.

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50 Patrick Scott, HRHA, 1921-2014 THE COURTYARD (1952) Oil on canvas, 24" x 20" (61 x 51cm), signed.

Provenance: private collection, acquired directly from the artist’s family and by descent.

This early painting by Scott demonstrates how he was at the forefront of Irish Modernism, going against the grain of conservatism that dominated the post-war Dublin art scene. He was among the first to show works in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, while also exhibiting with White Stag, a group of forward-looking pacifist artists who moved to Ireland from Britain in 1939 and stayed until the end of the war. However, Scott’s austere pared down aesthetic separated him from most of his contemporaries. These qualities of restraint and order were to remain a constant throughout his career, a continuous thread that ties paintings like The Courtyard to all his subsequent work.

In this painting one can see how the artist was drawn to motifs that had an underlying geometry. The courtyard walls and the tiled floor are flattened into a composition of simple rectangular shapes, locked firmly into a two-dimensional picture plane. Like Scott, many important international artists of this period were embracing the inherent integrity of a flat canvas, rejecting the use of shading and perspective to create the illusion of threedimensional space. In the USA this idea flourished throughout the 1960s when Minimalism took hold.

There is an endearing playfulness evident in early works like ‘The Courtyard’. The joyful staccato repetition of tiles is echoed in the stylised leaves at the top of the picture. Even so, the subtlety and control that we associate with Scott is ever present.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020

€4000 - 6000

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51 Patrick Scott, HRHA, 1921-2014 THE TABLE ON THE LAWN (1954) Oil on canvas, 36" x 43" (92 x 109cm), signed lower right.

Provenance: private collection, acquired directly from the artist’s family and by descent.

Exhibited: ‘Patrick Scott, Image Space, Light’ IMMA Dublin, Cultural Centre Letterkenny/Glebe Gallery Donegal 2014 (colour p.117). Reproduced in “Patrick Scott” by Aidan Dunne, p.46.

During the 1950s the young Patrick Scott gained considerable notice at home and abroad. In 1958 he won a Guggenheim Award, which led to the purchase of one of his paintings by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two years later he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Although this decade was Scott’s most figurative period, there can be no doubt that he was gravitating towards complete abstraction. This painting shows how the “seen” world, in this case a table sitting in a garden, is the trigger for what is essentially an “imagined” composition of geometric shapes. The tension between these two worlds, the real and the artificially constructed, gives the painting a certain frisson.

‘Table on the Lawn’ is very interesting spatially. The strong grids formed by the metal sides of the table are positioned so that the smaller one looks further away, even though there is no suggestion of receding distance in the lawn, which is absolutely flat. The most dramatic element in the composition is the table top, flipped up so that it’s locked firmly into the flat picture plane. The visual tension created by the opposition of 3-D space in the table legs and 2-D space in the lawn and table top invigorates the image, the observed world pushing against the imagined one. Scott has re-invented the scene, retaining the crisp freshness of the garden as he isolates a fragment that epitomises abstract architectural order.

After the war, Scott practiced as an architect, which is often linked to his predilection for angular lines and a simplified geometric approach. His lifelong commitment to exploring space within these limited parameters suggests that they spring from a personality that values calm, order and restraint.

Dr Frances Ruane. HRHA, May 2020

€4000 - 6000

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52 Patrick Scott, HRHA, 1921-2014 GOLD PAINTING 7/89 Gold leaf & acrylic on unprimed canvas, 48" x 48" (122 x 122cm), signed verso.

Provenance: private collection, acquired directly from the artist’s family and by descent.

The circle, often used to suggest the sun, is the shape that dominated Scott’s work from as far back as the early 1960s. One can perhaps trace the roots of this preoccupation with geometry to his time working with the Bauhaus-influenced architect Michael Scott. Patrick was on the team who designed Busáras, Dublin, between 1945-1953. Among other details in this iconic building, one cannot help but be struck by the enormous golden yellow concave ceiling wells that housed lighting for the restaurant. Tiled in gold, these were like giant suns. Although Patrick Scott left architecture to become a full-time artist in 1960, his aesthetic sensibility had inevitably been shaped by the preceding years.

By 1964 he began applying square sheets of gold leaf, usually within a circle, directly on to unprimed canvas. The circle, the square, gold, raw linen: these are to become the defining features of Scott’s paintings throughout the following decades.

His genius is the ability to retain variety and a freshness of vision within the narrow parameters set for himself.

‘Gold Painting 7/89’ has a subtle landscape format: a delicately thin layer of white paint applied to the lower half of the picture separating land from sky. Geometry permeates the composition, from the overall symmetrical arrangement of shapes, to the pattern of gold squares within the circle, and the squares and triangles that make up the mound in the foreground.

However, in this painting Scott relieves the strict order with some slightly irregular shapes within the mound and also by its ragged edges. There is something deliberately playful in this, a subtle disruption of order, a slight rebellion in the natural world.

Seamus Heaney, talking about artists in general and Scott in particular, spoke about how there were “putters in and takers out”, with the “art” being in knowing what to leave in. Scott is definitely a “taker out”, paring away everything but the most essential elements needed to encapsulate a vivid feeling.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020

€18000 - 22000

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53 Patrick Scott, HRHA, 1921-2014 GOLD DIPTYCH 7 1979 Double sided two fold screen, tempera and gold leaf on unprimed canvas, mounted on wood, each 52" x 64 ½" (132 x 164cm).

Provenance: private collection, acquired directly from the artist’s family and by descent.

Exhibited: “Patrick Scott Fifty Years” Penn Castle, Cork, 1994; “Patrick Scott A Retrospective” Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, cat no 65, 2002, (colour plate in book). Reproduced in “Patrick Scott” by Aidan Dunne, p.172-3.

Scott was drawn to Japanese and eastern cultures, an interest which he shared with the American painter Morris Graves, who became his friend while Graves lived in Ireland in the 1960s. The American artist was immersed in Asian aesthetics and philosophy, spending considerable time in the East. Although Scott didn’t immerse himself, like Graves, in Zen teaching, he was temperamentally aligned with the spirit of Eastern art. In this context one can appreciate how Japanese screens must have appealed to him. In works like Gold Diptych Scott has appropriated this format but has refreshed it with images that are uniquely his own.

At the ‘back’ of the screen the artist is playing with two complementary abstract ‘medallions’ that are both based on a square, a shape that is central to Scott’s work. The square is inherently stable but in this piece the artist rotates and overlaps it so that it gains energy, seeming to whirl around a central point like a pinwheel or whirligig. The concentric feel of these panels reminds one of a mandala, the Buddhist symbol of the unity and harmony of the universe that is often a focus of contemplation during meditation.

Although many of Scott’s pieces are abstract, in some there are poetic references to the natural world. On the ‘front’ of this screen one can see the obvious connection to landscape, with the horizon line running across the lower third of the canvas. The placement of the sun is different in each panel, suggesting the passage of time. Scott distils the universe, paring the visual world down to essential elements. His use of materials is also spare: the raw beauty of unprimed linen canvas, a thin wash of white tempera, the richness of gold leaf. The repetition of nearly transparent bands of diagonal lines imbues the piece with a gentle rhythmic flow. There is a serene meditative feel to this piece, Scott having condensed a moment of poetry from the clutter of visual reality.

Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, May 2020 €10000 - 15000

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54 Killian Schurmann, Contemporary CORMORANT WAITING Fused glass panel, 16¼" x 16" (41.5 x 40.5cm) (including base), signed & dated 1994.

Killian Schurmann is a glass artist and sculptor producing three dimensional pieces and fused glass panels. Killian’s glass workshop is located in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains where he has developed a method of fusing molten glass, colour pigments and other materials to form abstract, transparent landscapes and natural details. Every piece being an individual and exclusive object of art.

An integral part of this style is the method of fusing and manipulating glass in order to control the opacity, focus and passage of light and inner material textures producing spectacular imagery.

Both pieces offered here are Maquette’s for a larger piece, when combined won the California Gold medal.

“The concept for this work is based on the image one has of Cormorants ‘Waiting’, drying their wings on the rocks often in harsh conditions and Cormorants ‘Hunting below the surface’, in a visually more pristine world.

€6000 - 9000

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55 Killian Schurmann, Contemporary CORMORANT HUNTING BELOW THE SURFACE Fused glass panel, 14 ¼” x 15 ¾” (36.5 x 40cm) (including base), signed & dated 1994.

€6000 - 9000

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56 Orla de Bri, b.1965 MADEMOISELLE AUBERGINE Bronze, 15¼" x 9" x 4¾" (39 x 23 x 12cm), signed, ed. 3/5.

Orla de Brí works with a variety of materials including bronze, steel, stone, fibreglass and recently photography.

She brings subjects and materials together, that on first glance seem incompatible and yet they seamlessly work with this unique style. Combining steel with gold, or fibreglass with polished bronze, it is always intrigued with juxtaposed ideas and textures. She is very much a hands-on skilled sculptor, enjoying every aspect of the work; from the concept of the first drawing through to all the different physical processes.

She is included in many Private and Public Collections, including the Bank of Ireland, Aer Rianta, Dublin City University and The Office of Public Works. She is represented by the Solomon Gallery in Dublin

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€3500 - 5000

57 Orla de Bri, b.1965 SUMMER PHONE Bronze, 41" x 7" x 5" (104 x 18 x 12cm), signed.

€6000 - 9000

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58 Donald Teskey, RHA, b.1956 DUBLIN STREET SCENE Oil on paper, 22¼" x 30½" (56.5 x 77.4cm), signed & dated ’97.

€7000 - 10000

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59 Liam Belton, RHA, b.1947 ADAM WITH EGGS Oil on canvas, 16¾" x 22" (43 x 56cm), signed, inscribed & dated 2017 verso.

€4000 - 6000

60 Liam Belton, RHA, b.1947 TORSO, PEWTER AND EGGS Oil on canvas, 16¾" x 22" (43 x 56cm), signed, inscribed & dated 2017 verso.

€4000 - 6000 87

61† Ann Mulrooney, Contemporary BIRD BATH Bronze, 46" high (117cm).

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€800 - 1200

62 John Behan, RHA, b.1938 STANDING BULL Bronze, 12½" (h) x 14" (w) (32 x 35.5cm), unique.

€2000 - 4000

Many thanks to John Behan for identifying this piece.

63 Michael Warren, RHA, b.1950 PASQUA (1984) Bronze, 20½" high x 5½" wide (52 x 14.5cm) Irish artist Michael Warren studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. His monumental sculptures often seem to defy gravity and their strength lies in Warren’s ability to combine autonomous elements that retain their own tension and rhythm. Warren’s outdoor works are on public display worldwide. He was made a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2008, and an honorary member of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland in 2102 (ref. IMMA).

€3000 - 5000

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64 Basil Rákóczi, 1908-1979 MENDING THE NETS Oil on canvas, 21¼" x 25½" (54 x 64.8cm), signed & dated 1968, signed & dated ’68 verso, opus no. 10.196.

Unlikely as it may seem, the closest affinity between English and Irish painting came about during the Second World War as the result of two English painters, Basil Rakoczi and Kenneth Hall, settling in a cottage at Delphi, Co. Mayo. Their stay in the west was brief; they cycled and sketched, made friends, talked about ‘creative psychology’ and added to their number Ingouville-Williams. In early 1940 they moved to Dublin, for the sake of the company there, and began to hold meetings, organise exhibitions, lectures and debates, and to gather a significant following. The focus shifted towards painting above psychology, and the magnetic appeal of regular and fairly frequent exhibitions, combined with enthusiastic reviews, praise from the Irish Times, and the steady expansion of membership.

Bruce Arnold, 2020 €2000 - 3000

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65 Basil Rákóczi, 1908-1979 SAILORS DANCING Oil on paper, 19" x 21¾" (48.3 x 55.3cm), signed.

The present painting is a version of a picture by the same name by Modern British painter, Christopher Wood (1901-1930). The setting is most likely Tréboul in Brittany. Basil Rakoczi greatly admired Wood, whose work he became acquainted with through their mutual patron and some-time dealer, Mrs. Lucy Wertheim.

Lucy Wertheim was to have significant influence over Wood, Rakoczi and his fellow White Stag Group member, Kenneth Hall, during their early careers. In the case of both Wood and Hall however, these careers were tragically cut short by suicide.

Wood and Rakoczi were also influenced by the St. Ives school of painters, whose frequently primitive style is apparent here. This influence may also be seen in ‘Mending the Nets’.

Bruce Arnold, 2020 €3000 - 5000

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Dancing Sailors, Brittany by Christopher Wood

66 Kenneth Hall, 1913-1946 BIRD NESTING Oil on canvas, 12½" x 17" (31.6 x 43.2cm), signed.

Renowned art historian, Herbert Read, wrote the preface to a book entitled Three Painters: Basil Rakoczi, Kenneth Hall, Patrick Scott, written by Herbrand Ingouville-Williams and published by the Three Candles Press in 1944. This joyous publication is now a rarity and the name of its author only occasionally cited in modern Irish art circles. At the time, however, the small group of painters and writers on whom it focuses were leading figures in the Dublin art world, and beyond.

One of the most significant bodies of work created by Hall during his short career was a charming series of paintings in oils depicting seated ducks, of which the present picture is an excellent example.

â‚Ź2000 - 3000

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67 Michael Farrell, 1940-2000 RAILWAY STATION, LEZAN, FRANCE Acrylic on canvas, 53" x 79½" (135 x 202cm), signed verso.

Micheal’s painting shows the old Railway Station of Lezan, a village 2 kilometres from Cardet. In the past the mechanics serviced the trains in this building. Micheal added the train even though this finished a long time ago. It became a wine cellar in 1988, the year we arrived in Cardet, and was one of the places Micheal bought his wine. The changing landscape with the seasons was one of the subjects in the early 90s for several of his paintings. It was a very happy time for him but he was almost apologetic for doing ‘happy’ paintings.

Meg Farrell, the artists widow

€8000 - 12000

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68 Cherith McKinstry, 1928-2004 CEMENT MIXER Oil on canvas, 12" x 15¾" (30.5 x 40.25cm), signed & dated 1976; signed verso.

€800 - 1200

69 Basil Blackshaw, RHA, RUA, 1932-2016 EVENING ON THE LAGAN Watercolour and ink, 9¼" x 11¼" (23.4 x 28.5cm), inscribed.

Provenance: Collection of Cherith McKinstry (label verso).

€1500 - 2000 94

70 Frank McKelvey, RHA, RUA, 1895-1974 GORTAHOR CO. DONEGAL Oil on canvas, 15" x 20" (38 x 51cm), signed.

€3000 - 5000

71 Maurice Canning Wilks, RUA, 1911-1984 FARMHOUSE, ERRIGAL IN THE BACKGROUND Watercolour, 11¼" x 15½" (28.5 x 39.5cm), signed.

€800 - 1200 95

72 Mark O’Neill, b.1963 STILL LIFE WITH FRUIT AND WALNUT Oil on board, 18" x 25" (46 x 68.5cm), signed & dated 2006.

€3000 - 5000

73 Joe Dunne, b.1957 SUMMER AFTERNOON II Tempera on paper, 21½" x 30" (54.5 x 76cm), signed with monogram.

Provenance: RHA, 2001 (label verso).

€800 - 1200 96

74† Brian Bourke, HRHA, b.1936 HEAD IN A LANDSCAPE NO.1 and 2 Oil on canvas, each canvas 49" x 32½" (124.5 x 83cm), signed, inscribed & dated 1970 verso.

Born in Dublin in 1936, Brian Bourke studied painting at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin and St. Martin’s School of Art, London. From early landscapes and life-size nude self-portraits his work has evolved to encompass various series that explore his interest in observational work – rooted in the places and things he encounters in his day-to-day life – and fictional narrative.

He has represented Ireland at several international exhibitions, received numerous awards and his work is included in public and private collections both in Ireland and abroad. He is an elected member of Aosdána and an Honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

He is represented by Taylor Galleries on Kildare Street, Dublin (ref.).

€3000 - 5000

97

Standard Conditions of Business 1. Definitions In these Conditions, de Veres Art Auctions, who act as auctioneers and agents for the vendor, are called ‘the auctioneers’ (which expression shall be deemed to include their servants and agents) and the representative of de Veres conducting the auction is called ‘The Auctioneer’.

2. Third Party Liability Every person at or on the ‘Auctioneers’ premises or at any premises being used by the Auctioneer at any time shall be deemed to be there entirely at his/her own risk and shall have no claim whatsoever against the Auctioneers or their servants or agents in respect of any accident or incident which may occur nor any injury, damage or loss howsoever arising and whether or not same is the subject of any allegation of negligence.

3. General Whilst the Auctioneers make every effort to ensure the accuracy of their catalogue and the description of any lot: (a) Each lot as set out in the catalogue or as divided or combined with any other lots or lots is sold by the vendor with all faults, imperfections and errors of description. (b) Any claim under any Statute must be received in writing by the Auctioneers within three months of the sale. (c) The Auctioneers shall not be liable for consequential or resultant loss or damage whether sustained by a Vendor or a Purchaser or the owner of any item or their respective servants and agents arising in any circumstances whatsoever and irrespective of any claim made by any party as to negligence or lack of care of the Auctioneers or any part acting on their behalf. (d) Lots marked with † are those which deVeres hold a financial interest in.

4. The Auction (a) The Auctioneer has absolute discretion to divide any lot, to combine any two or more lots or to withdraw any lot or lots from the sale, to refuse bids, regulate bidding or cancel the sale without in any case giving any reason or previous notice. He may bid on behalf of the vendor for all goods which are being offered subject to reserve or at the Auctioneer’s discretion. (b) The highest bidder shall be the buyer except in the case of a dispute. If during the auction the Auctioneer considers that a dispute had arisen.

He has absolute discretion to settle it or to re-offer the lot. The Auctioneer may at his sole discretion determine the advance or bidding or refuse a bid. (c) Each lot is put up for sale subject to any reserve price placed by the vendor. Whether or not there is a reserve price the seller has the right to bid either personally or by any one person (who may be the Auctioneer). (d) All conditions, notices, descriptions, statements and other matters in the catalogue and elsewhere concerning any lot are subject to any statements modifying or affecting the same made by the Auctioneer from the rostrum prior to any bid being accepted for the lot.

5. Recession Notwithstanding any other terms of these Conditions, if within 12 months after the sale, the Auctioneers have received from the buyer any notice in writing that in his view the lot is a deliberate forgery and within twenty-one days after such notification the buyer returns the same to the Auctioneers in the same condition as at the time of sale and by producing evidence, the burden of proof to be upon the buyer satisfies the Auctioneers that considered in the light of the entry in the catalogue the lot is a deliberate forgery, then the sale of the lot will be rescinded and the purchase price of the sale refunded. In the event of a dispute then the matter shall be settled by the President of the Institution of Chartered Surveyors in the Republic of Ireland. Both the buyer and the vendor agree to be bound by the decision .

6. Default The Auctioneers disclaim responsibility for default by - either the buyer or the vendor because they act as Agents for the vendor only and therefore do not pay out to the vendor until payment is received from the buyer.

Instructions given by telephone are accepted at the sender’s risk and must be confirmed in writing forthwith.

7. In the event of a sale by private treaty both the vendor and the buyer agree to be found by these and any Special Conditions of Sale.

8. Retention of Title All goods remain the property of the vendor until paid for in full. The Auctioneers will not assume liability to discharge nett proceeds arising from the sale of goods until those goods have been paid for in full.

VENDOR’S CONDITIONS 9. Instructions All goods delivered to the Auctioneers’ premises will be deemed to be delivered for sale by auction and will be catalogued and sold at the discretion of the Auctioneer and accepted by them subject to all the Sale Conditions. By delivering the goods to the Auctioneers for inclusion in their auction sales the vendor acknowledges that he or she has accepted and agreed to be bound by all these Conditions.

10. Collection and Deliveries The Auctioneers do not normally undertake the packing, collection or delivery of goods but will if requested use their best endeavors as Agent of the Owner to arrange for an independent contractor on the owner’s behalf to deal with packing, collection and/or delivery. The Auctioneer will not in any event arrange insurance of the goods and will accordingly not be liable for any loss or damage to goods howsoever arising including breakages or for any damage to premises, fixtures or fittings therein caused by such contractor or otherwise and the owner is responsive for all arrangements to verify that any such contractor and the goods is/are appropriately insured. Unless instructions are received to the contrary, charges (including VAT) for such services will be charged to the vendor’s account or discharged through the Auctioneers by the purchaser as the case may be. The Auctioneers’ liability (if any) will rise only where they themselves carry out packing and collection/delivery and only in the case of breakage or loss caused through deliberate negligence of their employees and in any event in one single contract and the Auctioneers’ liability will not exceed £500. Provided further than the Auctioneers will not be liable for consequential loss in any circumstances whatsoever.

11. Loss or Damage and Storage The Auctioneers reserve the right to store or arrange for the storage of goods held by them or delivered to them either on their own premises or elsewhere at their sole discretion and entirely at the owner’s risk. The Auctioneers shall not be liable for any loss (including consequential loss) howsoever caused of damage to goods of any kind including breakages, or for unauthorised removal of goods. Should the owner of goods so wish it will be his/her goods while they are in the possession of the Auctioneers.

12. Right to Re-sell The Auctioneer reserves the right to re-sell any item which has not been collected within thirty days of purchase.

13. Payment of accounts is by debit card up to €1000 or by bank transfer.

We do not accept credit cards or cash transactions.

TERMS Purchaser 1. 25% incl. VAT will be added to the hammer price for each lot.

2. All accounts must be discharged by certified cheque, bank draft or cash.

3. The responsibility for items purchased passes to the purchaser on the fall of the hammer.

4. The Auctioneers reserve the right to look for 25% deposit on all goods.

VAT Regulations: All lots are sold within the auctioneers VAT margin scheme. Revenue Regulations require that the buyers’ premium must be invoiced at a rate which is inclusive of VAT. This VAT is not recoverable by any VAT registered buyers.

98

B Ballagh, R Behan, J Belton, L Blackshaw, B Bourke, B

8 29, 30, 62 59, 60 35, 69 74

C Campbell, G Collins, P Collis, P Cooke, B Crozier, W Curling, P

31 4 49 42 39 38

D de Bri, O Dillon, G Dunne, J

99

56, 57 33 73

F Farrell, M

67

G Gillespie, R

43

H Hall, K Hamilton, L Henry, P

66 41 20

J Lavery, J

23

K Kelly, O

17, 18

L le Brocquy, L

11, 27

M Maguire, C McDonnell, H McKelvey, F McKinstry, C McSweeney, S McWilliam, FE Mooney, M Mulrooney, A

37 7 34, 70 68 1, 3 9, 10, 28 48 61

O O’Conor, R O’Malley, T O’Connell, E O’Donoghue, H O’Neill, M

22 26, 36,40 46, 47 5, 6 72

R Rákóczi, B Russell, AE

64, 65 19

S Schurmann, K 54, 55 Scott, A 44, 45 Scott, P 50, 51, 52, 53 Scott, W 12 Scully, S 14 Shinnors, J 16 Swanzy, M 25 T Teskey, D

15, 58

V Vallely, JB van Ofen, M

32 13

W Warren, M Wilks, M

63 71

Y Yeats, JB

21, 24

100