Important Irish Visionary Painting by AE

ADAM’S
Est.1887
Auction Wednesday 27th
March 2019
IMPORTANT IRISH ART

Front cover : Lot 72 Walter Osborne
Back cover : Lot 105 Basil Blackshaw
Inside front : Lot 92 Aloysius O’Kelly
Inside back : Lot 9 Charles Lamb

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CONTACTS
Brian Coyle FSCSI FRICS
CHAIRMAN
James O’Halloran BA FSCSI FRICS
MANAGING DIRECTOR
j.ohalloran@adams.ie
Stuart Cole MSCSI MRICS
DIRECTOR
s.cole@adams.ie
Amy McNamara BA
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
amymcnamara@adams.ie
Eamon O’Connor BA
DIRECTOR
e.oconnor@adams.ie
Adam Pearson BA
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
a.pearson@adams.ie
Helena Carlyle
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
h.carlyle@adams.ie
Niamh Corcoran
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
niamh@adams.ie
Nick Nicholson
CONSULTANT
n.nicholson@adams.ie
Nicholas Gore Grimes
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
nicholas@adams.ie
Katie McGale BCIT, MPHIL, Assoc SCSI
JEWELLERY, SILVER & WATCHES
katie@adams.ie
Ronan Flanagan
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
r.flanagan@adams.ie
Claire-Laurence Mestrallet BA, G.G
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
HEAD OF JEWELLERY & WATCHES
claire@adams.ie
CONTACTS

AUCTION
Wednesday 27th March 2019 at 6pm
VENUE
Adam’s Salerooms,
26 St. Stephen’s Green,
Dublin
D02 X665,
Ireland
SALE VIEWING
ADAM’S
Est.1887
26 St. Stephen’s Green
Dublin D02 X665
Tel +353 1 6760261
Important Irish Art
ADAM’S
Est.1887
22ND
- 27TH
MARCH
Adam’s, 26 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin D02 X665

Friday 22nd
March 10.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday 23rd
March 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Sunday 24th
March 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Monday 25th
Tuesday 26th
Wednesday 27th

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PURCHASERS
1. Estimates and Reserves
These are shown below each lot in this sale. All amounts shown are in Euro. The figures shown are provided merely as a guide to prospective
purchasers. They are approximate prices which are expected, are not definitive and are subject to revision. Reserves, if any, will not be any
higher than the lower estimate.
2. Paddle Bidding
All intending purchasers must register for a paddle number before the auction. Please allow time for registration. Potential purchasers are
recommended to register on viewing days.
3. Payment, Delivery and Purchasers Premium
Thursday 28th March 2019. Under no circumstances will delivery of purchases be given whilst the auction is in progress. All purchases
must be paid for and removed from the premises not later than Friday 29th March 2019 at the purchaser’s risk and expense. After this time
all uncollected lots will be removed to commercial storage and additional charges will apply.
Auctioneers commission on purchases is charged at the rate of 20% (exclusive of VAT).
Terms: Strictly cash, card, bankers draft or cheque drawn on an Irish bank. Cheques will take a minimum of five workings days to clear the
bank, unless they have been vouched to our satisfaction prior to the sale, or you have a previous cheque payment history with Adam’s. Pur-
chasers wishing to pay by credit card (Visa & MasterCard) may do so, however, it should be noted that such payments will be subject to an
administrative fee of 1.5% on the invoice total. American Express is subject to a charge of 3.65% on the invoice total. Debit cards including
laser card payments are not subject to a surcharge, there are however daily limits on Laser card payments. Bank Transfer details on request.
Please ensure all bank charges are paid in addition to the invoice total, in order to avoid delays in the release of items. Goods will only be
released upon clearance through the bank of all monies due.
Artists Resale Rights (Droit de Suite) is not payable by purchasers.
4. 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 is not recoverable by any VAT registered buyer.
5. Condition
It is up to the bidder to satisfy themselves prior to buying as to the condition of a lot. Whilst we make certain observations on the lot, which
are intended to be as helpful as possible, references in the condition report to damage or restoration are for guidance only and should be
evaluated by personal inspection by the bidder or a knowledgeable representative. The absence of such a reference does not imply that an
item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others. The condition report is an
expression of opinion only and must not be treated as a statement of fact.
Please ensure that condition report requests are submitted before 12 noon on Tuesday 26th March 2019 as we cannot guarantee that they
will be dealt with after this time.
6. Absentee Bids
We are happy to execute absentee or written bids for bidders who are unable to attend and can arrange for bidding to be conducted by tele-
phone. However, these services are subject to special conditions (see conditions of sale in this catalogue). All arrangements for absentee and
telephone bidding must be made before 5pm on the day prior to sale. Cancellation of bids must be confirmed before this time and cannot
be guaranteed after the auction as commenced.
Bidding by telephone may be booked on lots with a minimum estimate of €500. Early booking is advisable as availability of lines cannot be
guaranteed.
7. Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge, with thanks, the assistance of Julian Campbell, Karen Reihill, Roisin Kennedy, Niamh Corcoran, Denise Fer-
ran, Joseph McBrinn, Helena Carlyle, Dickon Hall, Niamh O’Sullivan, Marianne O’Kane Boal, Aiden Dunne, Eamonn Mallie and Pádraic
E Moore.
8. All lots are being sold under the Conditions of Sale as printed in this catalogue and on display in
the salerooms.

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www.adams.ie Important Irish Art | 27th March 2019

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1 WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH (1854-1920)
Bog in Flower
Watercolour, 25 x 35cm (9¾ x 13¾’’)
Signed and dated 1914
€ 2,000 - 3,000
View of Fair Head, Co. Antrim
Watercolour, 24 x 33cm (9½ x 13”)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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Dollymount, Co. Dublin
Watercolour, 26 x 38cm (10¼ x 15’’)
Signed and inscribed
€ 2,000 - 3,000
Dawn over Bog with Scots Pines
Watercolour, 26 x 38cm (10¼ x 15’’)
Signed with initials
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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6 ROSE MAYNARD BARTON RWS (1856-1929)
Still Life with Dead Bull Finch, Blue Finch and Coal Tit
Watercolour, 18 x 35.5 cm (7 x 14”)
€ 1,200 - 1,600
5 MILDRED ANNE BUTLER RWS FRSA RUA (1858-1941)
Garden Scene, probably at Kilmurry
Watercolour, 18 x 26cm (7 x 10¼’’)
€ 1,000 - 1,500

11
The Alpine Glow on the Jungfrau
Watercolour, 24 x 34cm (9½ x 13½’’)
Signed and dated 1914; inscribed in pencil verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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8 GRACE HENRY HRHA (1868-1953)
Lac d’Annecy
Oil on canvas, 50 x 61cm (19¾ x 24’’)
Signed
€ 4,000 - 6,000

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9 CHARLES LAMB RHA (1893-1944)
A Quiet Day in Connemara
Oil on board, 33 x 40cm (13 x 15¾’’)
Signed
€ 12,000 - 18,000

14
10 RICHARD KING (1907-1974)
Rock Fishing Gurteen
Gouache on board, 38 x 48cm (15 x 18¾’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200
11 WILLIAM CRAMPTON GORE RHA (1871-1946)
View from the Dublin Mountains
Oil on board, 28.5 x 45cm (11¼ x 17¾’’)
Provenance: The artist’s daughter, Elizabeth Parry. Private Collection Dublin.
€ 800 - 1,200

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12 NICCOLO D'ARDIA CARACCIOLO RHA (1941-1989)
Blackhall Place, Dublin
Oil on canvas, 43 x 60cm (17 x 23½'')
Signed and dated (19)'89
Provenance: With the Solomon Gallery, Dublin,
where purchased by the present owner.
€5,000 – 8,000

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14 BRETT MCENTAGART RHA (B.1939)
Sailing by Sandycove Point
Oil on panel, 29.5 x 45cm (12 x 18’’)
Signed and dated (20)’18
€ 1,000 - 1,500
13 CECIL MAGUIRE RHA RUA (B.1930)
Horse and Cart
Oil on board, 39 x 30cm (15¼ x 11¾’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

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15 MARTIN MOONEY (B.1960)
View of the Estuary, Ramelton, Co. Donegal
Oil on canvas, 49 x 77cm (19.2 x 30”)
Provenance: With The Solomon Gallery, Dublin 1992
€ 5,000 - 8,000

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16 GEORGE RUSSELL AE (1867-1935)
‘In Some Ancestral Paradise’
Oil on canvas, 54 x 82cm (21¼ x 32¼’’)
Monogrammed; inscribed verso
George W. Russell was born in County Armagh in 1867 and moved to Dublin with his family at the age of 11.
Russell became a student at the Metropolitan School of Art in the 1880s and went on to receive further train-
ing at the RHA. It was as an art student that Russell first encountered William Butler Yeats, who later recalled
how Russell was perpetually bored in life drawing class, far preferring to devote time to painting imaginary
compositions gleaned from imaginary worlds. Both Yeats and Russell shared many esoteric interests and
maintained a lifelong and occasionally tempestuous friendship. It was also in these years as an art student that
Russell began experiencing vivid apparitions. These mystic visions are comparable to those of William Blake
and were similarly a vital impetus to Russell’s work as a painter and poet. A compulsion to understand these
visionary occurrences aroused Russell’s interest in the occult and eventually led him to the Dublin Lodge of the
Theosophical Society. Theosophy is an esoteric philosophy that prompts its followers to seek direct knowledge
from the mysteries of life and nature. Russell rapidly became a central figure in the movement and many of his
earliest writings were published in journals such as the Irish Theosophist. It was in these journals that Russell
first used the pseudonym AEON later shorted to AE.
An extremely prolific painter, AE’s work may be found in public collections throughout Ireland, with particularly
notable examples in Trinity College Dublin and Armagh County Museum. While his visionary paintings are
comparable to those of Symbolist Gustave Moreau, his landscapes -such as ‘In Some Ancestral Paradise’- show
the influence of Impressionism, particularly in the use of short and thick strokes of paint to suggest dappled
sunlight. AE was an avid supporter of Hugh Lane’s efforts to establish a gallery of Modern Art in the city of
Dublin and would have had opportunities to view Impressionist paintings such as those by Claude Monet via
this affiliation with Lane. AE’s oeuvre is comprised primarily of landscapes, portraits and of course fantastical
or visionary subjects. However, this painting attests, landscapes and visionary scenes often coalesce; and one
is never quite certain if the subject depicted is of this physical world or some supernatural realm. AE was fas-
cinated by folklore and believed that the sídhe populated many of the more untouched parts of rural Ireland
which he visited frequently in his role as a spokesman for The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.
Pádraic E. Moore, February 2019
€ 12,000 - 18,000

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17 NATHANIEL HONE RHA (1831-1917)
Malahide Sands with Figures
Oil on canvas, 59 x 90cm (23¼ x 35’’)
Provenance: “Important Irish Art Sale”, these rooms, December 2008, Lot 91, where purchased by
present owner.
When Nathaniel Hone returned to Ireland in 1872 it was almost twenty years since he had first gone
to Paris to study at the studio of Yvon. On his return he married and settled at Seafield, Malahide,
the family estate.
While there he continued to paint and to farm and indeed many of his paintings from this period
carry the influences of his Barbizon period and it can be difficult to distinguish untitled landscapes
or coastal views as to whether they are French or Irish.
The present work is doubtless Malahide, with it’s great expanse of sands reflected in the similarly
vast open sky. There are strong similarities with ‘Evening, Malahide Sands’ from c.1883 (Hugh Lane)
with its “afterglow of sunset seen across reaches of sand and water. The open sky, the expanse of
air and light reflected in the extent of water and wet sand, convey an astonishing sense of space
and freedom”. ( E.J.G. The Irish Times 1901)
Unlike the Hugh Lane painting the two figures in the present work look the part of two North Dublin
locals gathering kelp, complete with shawls and long skirts and are set against the reflected light of
the outgoing stream which frames them in the centre of the composition. This device also provides
the sense of scale which gives the landscape its vastness.
€ 20,000 - 30,000

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19 FRANK EGGINTON RCA FIAL (1908-1990)
Muckish from Horn Head, Co. Donegal
Watercolour, 38 x 50.5cm (15 x 19¾’’)
Signed
€ 400 - 600
18 FRANK EGGINTON RCA FIAL (1908-1990)
Near Waterville, Co. Kerry
Watercolour, 53 x 75cm (20¾ x 29½’’)
Signed; inscribed with title verso and dated
(19)’66
€ 600 - 1,000

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20 NORMAN GARSTIN (1847-1926)
The Workshop
Oil on board, 23 x 34cm (9 x 13¼’’)
Provenance: With Nicholas Gallery, label verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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21 NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA (1901-1980)
The Customs House, Dublin (1954)
Oil on canvas, 68 x 91cm (26¾ x 35¾’’)
This colourful painting of The Customs House in Dublin proclaims the strong influence of the School of Paris
on Norah McGuinness. Gandon’s imposing building is presented as almost weightless, its classical architec-
ture depicted sketchily in thick dark lines. In front of it toy-like boats bob on the surface of the Liffey. A small
back tug spews out an enormous plume of blue-white smoke while a larger steam boat in the foreground is
painted a mixture of glorious oranges and pinks. A woman in a sundress sits on the quay while a man in short
blue shirt sleeves walks past.
McGuinness makes a feature of the lift belt hanging from an elegant lamp post and surrounded by four metal
poles in the right-hand foreground. The latter are reminiscent of the Gondola poles at the Ponte di Rialto
in Venice, familiar to tourists everywhere. The golden sunlight seen in the orange tones of the sky and the
relaxed summer atmosphere of the scene is equally more Mediterranean than Irish sea.
McGuinness represented Ireland at the major international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, in 1950. Her
knowledge of France and Italy must have inspired her imagination in the making of this work. The strong
bright colours and the diaphanous forms of the buildings and fixtures of the city recall the work of the French
Fauvists, especially Raoul Dufy. McGuinness had studied art in Paris in the early 1930s and was well versed in
modern French art. The painting is full of movement and the noises and sounds of the location are conveyed
through the emancipated deployment of line across the composition. As Anne Crookshank wrote, McGuin-
ness, ‘uses a very free, bold brushwork which suggests rather than describes the objects in her pictures’.
Having lived and worked in Paris, London and New York, the artist was a cosmopolitan at heart and chose to
represent Dublin as a vibrant European city with grand buildings, motor cars and hedonistic citizens. This is
one of several oil paintings of the city centre that McGuinness made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, some
of which were included in her 1950 Venice Biennale exhibition. She had made gouache and watercolour
paintings of the Thames and its surroundings when she lived in London in the 1930s. A gouache painting of
New York Harbour c.1938 was included in her 1968 Retrospective exhibition in Trinity College Dublin in 1968.
This also featured several gouaches and watercolours of Dublin city such a ‘The Canal, Leeson Street’; ‘The Cus-
toms House’, 1939, and ‘The Liffey’, 1944. From the mid 1940s McGuinness produced oil paintings of Dublin
that centred on the Liffey or the canals. Clearly the interaction of the natural elements of water contrasted
by the built environment fired her imagination as it had the Impressionists, the Fauvists and many other
modernist artists. Later in her career Dublin Bay and its bird-life would become the focus of McGuinness’s
urban paintings and the metropolitan atmosphere of this earlier work was replaced by a more abstract en-
gagement with nature.
Róisín Kennedy, February 2019
€ 25,000 - 35,000

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A Stroll in the Park, St. Stephen’s Green (1940)
Gouache, 35 x 50cm (8¾ x 19¾’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

27
Garden Landscape with Bridge (1946)
Gouache, 42 x 55cm (16½ x 21½’’)
€ 4,000 - 6,000

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25 HILDA ROBERTS HRHA (1901-1982)
Flower Sellers
Pencil, 28 x 20cm (11 x 7¾’’)
Exhibited: Dublin, Taylor Galleries, Catalogue
No.55, 25th May - 9th June (year unknown).
€ 600 - 1,000
24 HILDA ROBERTS HRHA (1901-1982)
Fleeting Moment (1944)
Oil on board, 30 x 30cm (11¾ x 11¾’’)
Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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26 MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978)
Man with Bird
Oil on board, 37 x 27cm (14½ x 10½’’)
Provenance: Miss Mary Tullo, the artist’s niece;
with Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

30
Masks
Oil on canvas, 35 x 29cm (13¾ x 11½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin
label verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000

31
Detention Only
Oil on board, 21 x 17.5cm (8¼ x 7’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

32
Crows (1961)
Oil on canvas, 46 x 66cm (18 x 26’’)
Painted in 1961 and exhibited at the Dawson Gallery that year, ‘Crows’ is strongly in-
fluenced by McGuinness’s stay in the Algarve the same year. She came home early to
escape the intense heat. In this consummately controlled work, the elongated husks
of thistles and grasses silhouette a scene of haystacks in a sub-baked Irish field.
Through a loose application of structural lines, the forms of the stacks and the distant
town are lucidly sketched out, in a manner that is ultimately indebted to the artist’s
understanding of cubism. McGuinness had studied with the cubist painter André
Lhote in Paris in 1929-31 and continued to develop her understanding of the style
throughout her career. Geometric patterning of strong blues and orange enhance the
intensity of the composition and result in a syncopated surface that transforms the
landscape into a modern decorative vision of colour and line.
Róisín Kennedy, February 2019
€ 15,000 - 20,000

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30 LADY BEATRICE GLENAVY RHA (1881-1970)
Flowers
Oil on canvas, 28 x 37cm (11 x 14½’’)
Signed with monogram; also signed and inscribed with title
verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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31 NANO REID (1900-1981)
Tinker’s Ponies (c.1969)
Oil on board, 56 x 60cm (22 x 23½’’)
Signed; inscribed verso
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, label verso; with
Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, label verso.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

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33 WILLIAM BINGHAM MCGUINNESS RHA
(1849-1928)
Continental Street with Figures
Watercolour, 37 x 26cm (14½ x 10¼’’)
Signed
€ 600 - 800
32 ALFRED GREY RHA (1845-1926)
A Kid in a Landscape
Oil on paper laid on panel, 18 x 27cm (7 x 10½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Cynthia O’Connor, label verso
€ 500 - 800

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34 MARIA DOROTHY WEBB ROBINSON (1840-1920)
A Parisian Street Scene
Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 35.5cm (10 x 14’’)
Signed
Born in Northern Ireland, Maria Dorothea Webb, moved to Dublin where she was
probably a student at the R.D.S. Schools. She started exhibiting at the R.H.A. in
1873, giving her address as 7 Palmerstown Road, Dublin, and continued to exhibit
there until 1917. She went to Paris in 1880, becoming a pupil of Robert-Fleury at the
Academie Julian. She made regular summer visits to Brittany, c. 1881-1885, initially
to Pont-Aven, then becoming one of the early foreign members of the artist colony
at Concarneau. There she stayed at the Hotel des Voyageurs. She is thought to have
met her future husband, Harry Harewood Robinson, at Concarneau and they were
to later become central figures in the artists’ colony at St. Ives, Cornwall. She made
her debut at the 1883 Paris Salon with A Breton Farm that she painted in Pont Aven.
Maria exhibited a large number of her Breton paintings, of fishermen and peasant
women, of street, market and woodland scenes, at venues in Dublin, London, and
Liverpool, 1881-87, and, significantly, at the Paris Salon, 1883-84. The present work,
an evening street scene in Paris dates to the late 1880s.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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35 EDWIN HAYES RHA RI ROI (1819-1904)
Cullercoats, Evening
Oil on board, 17.5 x 39cm (6¾ x 15¼’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
36 ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM ASHFORD PRHA (1746-1824)
Wooded River Landscape
Oil on panel, 14 x 18cm (5½ x 7’’)
€ 800 - 1,200

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37 WILLIAM SADLER II (1782-1839)
Bullock Castle, Dalkey
Oil on panel, 19.5 x 26.5cm (7¾ x 10½’’)
€ 5,000 - 8,000

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38 GEORGE BARRET SNR. RA (C.1730-1784)
Landscape with Figures
Oil on canvas, 99 x 134.5cm (39 x 53’’)
Provenance: Mrs Rosie Black, Dublin. Private collection Ireland.
Barret was a friend of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – and their work therefore engages an Anglo-Irish per-
spective on landscape which requires an inherent connection between aesthetics and politics which, like
other aspects of Irish history, have been underplayed in the dominant narratives of British art. 1
The son of a tailor, Barret was born in Dublin. He was to become a founding member of the Royal Acad-
emy in 1768, and his work was popular in his lifetime. 2 According to Thomas Bodkin, “George Barret, the
elder, was reputed in his day, to be the greatest landscape painter whom Ireland, England, or Scotland
had till then produced.” 3 Despite this Barret experienced the vicissitudes of the eighteenth century art
market and ended his life in relative obscurity and bankruptcy.
While this picture may be undated, based on a stylistic analysis the present picture was painted before
Barret’s move to London around 1763 and was most certainly an Irish view. The composition was al-
legedly influenced by Burke’s ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful. The enhanced detail of this early
painting in the style of romantic realism creates a ‘sublime’ mood. It is rumoured that Burke introduced
Barret to the Dargle Valley near Powerscourt Falls during the early 1760s leading to a connection with
one of Barret’s earliest patrons, Lord Powerscourt, owner of this property. Patrons such as the Taylours
of Headford and the Conollys of Castletown began to commission series of topographical paintings.
These landscapes demonstrated the extent of Barret’s talent and helped him establish his reputation in
London. Barret soon began exhibiting views of the Dargle Valley at the Society of Artists of Great Britain.
This painting has several characteristics typical of Barret’s early work including the framing of the trees,
diffused light, the heavy application of and the use of saturated colour. To the right of the composition,
a cluster of trees and foliage almost reach the top of the canvas. The painting depicts two men with two
washerwomen with one holding a baby. There is a dog with them while they are fishing along a stream
with two fishnets. A view of a town can be seen in the distance.
This painting was purchased by the Dublin dealer, Mrs. Rosie Black and was restored, lined and given a
new stretcher before it was purchased by the present owners in the 1980s.
Logan Morse, February 2019
1 For treatments of this see for example L. Gibbons, Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Colonial Sublime (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
2 E. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530–1790 (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1978), pp. 241-2.
3 T. Bodkin, Four Irish Landscape Painters (Dublin: The Talbot Press, 1920).
€ 50,000 - 80,000

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39 ERSKINE NICOL RSA ARA (1825-1904)
The Children’s Fairing (1870)
Oil on canvas, 88 x 72cm (34½ x 28½’’)
Signed and dated 1870; inscribed verso in ink
Provenance: Lady Lever Collection (WHL 3797), Thomas Agnew & Sons label verso, also a typed label with
artist and title and ‘lent by the Trustees of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight’.
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1871, Catalogue no. 1162
‘The Children’s Fairing’ is an exquisite example of Erskine Nicol’s ability to bring the viewer into a picture, extend-
ing an open invitation to become part of the crowd. With a glance, our ears are assaulted by cheery shouts,
trumpets and chatter, whilst are eyes dance from figure to figure as if seeking someone who we have lost. Yet
no matter how far our gaze wanders, we are constantly brought back to the orange glimmer of the proffered
fruit, the enticing look from their seller and the questioning expression of the possible buyer.
For collectors of Victorian painting, ‘The Children’s Fairing’ is a masterpiece of artistic storytelling and it is no
wonder that it temporarily came to represent part of the Lady Lever Art Collection in Liverpool. So named for
his wife, the true collector was Lord Leverhulme, a man who acquired over twenty thousand works of art in his
lifetime. Leverhulme was the tycoon behind ‘Sunlight Soap’, a company which, following Leverhulme’s death,
merged with Dutch ‘Margarine Unie’ to create today’s ‘Unilever’.
Lord Leverhulme began to train his artistic eye as part of an ingenious marketing ploy which involved him
buying paintings that he believed would appeal to the Victorian housewife. He would then reproduce images
of these works in advertisements for and on the packaging of his products, thus enticing his primary market.
However, from this, he developed a keen eye for skill and began to amass a collection for his own personal
enjoyment, with Victorian works being his initial passion. Truly inspired by the pieces he found, Leverhulme
is noted as being morally uplifted by their aesthetic, stating that “art and the beautiful civilise and elevate be-
cause they enlighten and ennoble.”
Standing before ‘The Children’s Fairing’, it is hard not to hear the truth in his words. Nicol has taken a common
event, one that could be brushed aside as being polluted and coarse, and made it into something sublime. The
carefully rendered expression on each face reminds us of the intricacy of human emotion. The colourful fab-
rics bring a sense of luxury to this muddy harbour market and the waxy shine of the oranges refer our minds
to the exotic. By making the mundane extraordinary, Nicol generates within us a greater understanding of the
complexity of human nature - our interactions with our fellow people, the world which we have sculpted and
the enigma of art itself.
Helena Carlyle, February 2019
€ 15,000 - 20,000

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40 ERSKINE NICOL RSA ARA (1825-1904)
Past Work
Oil on canvas, 100 x 133cm (39¼ x 52¼’’)
Signed
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1873.
Erskine Nicol’s prolific career spanned the 19th century and encompassed an era in which Europe was awakening to post-revolu-
tionary freedom and a rising power of the middle classes. Such political change altered the way in which artists conducted their
work. No longer were they solely reliant on commissions from a wealthy few, but, instead, artists were able to produce work for
exhibitiontoawidermarket,whowouldinturnbuypiecesastooktheirfancy.Accordingly,weconsequentlyseeariseinpaintings
depicting working class subjects and the everyday man, images that would be sympathetic to the bourgeoisie buyer.
An acclaimed artist, Nicol often exhibited in Britain and Ireland, however his art also brought him further afield to Paris, where
he undoubtedly came into contact with the works of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. ‘Past Work’ represents itself as
a beautiful fusion of the artistic styles of these two men. In the painting, we are introduced to an old fisherman who appears
resigned in his retirement. Slumped against a wall, his once strong body no longer supports him as it should, whilst the lines of
his weather-beaten face lay bare the physical struggles that he has endured. In this, we are reminded of the grittiness of workers
as portrayed by Courbet in his art - a social statement as to the daily turmoil of their occupation. Hand in hand with this, we see
the romanticism favoured by Millet, where the physical labourer is idealised and softened through the use of warm tones and
a subdued glowing light. This sentimentality echoes that held by Nicol for each of his subjects, regardless of their nationality or
social status.
Unlike much of Nicol’s oeuvre, ‘Past Work’ is devoid of humour. Instead, Nicol has imbued this piece with a raw emotion that en-
snares its viewer with empathy. Surrounded by a world to which he once belonged, the old fisherman seems lost in his inability.
In contrast to the workers behind him, his gnarled hands can no longer deftly move through fishing nets and his weak legs would
buckle under the strain of a heavy load. In a perfect picture of the continuance of life, we are presented with a timeline, the central
man a stark reminder of the effect of living.
€ 12,000 - 18,000

45

46
41 EDWIN HAYES RHA RI ROI (1819-1904)
Smacks Running for Scarborough
Signed
Exhibited (probably): 1871 London, Royal Academy, as ‘Freshening Gale, Scarboro: Fishing Boats Returning to Harbour’,
Catalogue no. 389
Edwin Hayes was born in Bristol but spent much of his childhood living in Dublin. Growing up next to the city’s busy ports, a love
of the sea was firmly imbedded in the artist and he sought to experience it at its rawest. An avid sailor in his youth, Hayes used his
knowledge to gain employment as a steward’s boy on a ship bound for America and the glory of the Atlantic was laid bare before
him.
Arguably, this hands-on approach is what enabled Edwin Hayes to create superlative works, with each painting being imbued with
an atmosphere that could only be evoked from experience. In ‘Smacks Running for Scarborough’, the North Sea has been trans-
formed into an aching belly of water, with each cavernous dip threatening to swallow those within it. As a thriving fishing town in
the 19th and 20th centuries, Scarborough’s inhabitants would not have been strangers to the perils of the sea and, here, Hayes
manages to capture the everyday struggles of the industry. Through the use of vigorous brushstrokes on the water, Hayes injects
a tangible energy into his picture, the rolling waves swaying the viewer’s vision so that we can feel the boat lurch beneath us. The
sails bellow outwards in their fight with the wind, mimicking the bent bodies of the fishermen as they bow their heads against the
salty sting of the spray. Drawn to this activity surrounding the central boat, we are urged to follow the gaze of the helmsman as
he stares out to sea and share in his anguish at the impending storm. Indeed, it is as if the menacing darkness has brought with it
such trepidation that even the sails themselves are trying to flee in the opposite direction.
In contrast to this, the clouds above the shore have parted to unveil the land as a beacon of safety, an immovable mass against the
uncertainty of the water. Although the fishermen’s livelihoods depend on the sea, Hayes has painted her as a volatile and unfor-
giving provider, ready to render her servants helpless with only a moment’s notice. It is, ultimately, to the land that they must go,
banished by her threat. For artists, such as Hayes, who endured a genuine love affair with the sea, it is this fickleness that yielded
an endless source of inspiration and subject matter. Despite a prolific career, each of Hayes’ seascapes carries its own unique
beauty, the shifting colours and weather patterns flitting through his canvases as clouds across the sky.
€ 10,000 - 15,000

47

48
42 THOMAS ROSE MILES (1844-1916)
After the Storm, Gorleston Harbour
Signed; also signed and inscribed with title verso
Long before the currently well known Irish artists painted in the Roundstone area, the artist Thomas Rose Miles
(1844 -1916) painted all round the area depicting sea themes from Cashel Bay (Casla Bay) to Slyne Head (rendered
through typos as Stone Head) and showing scenes of catches being landed in Roundstone and Kilkieranin South
Connemara as well as enjoying fishing at Ballinahinch Fisheries. He often depicted fisherman landing their catch in
rocky inlets like this or Dogs Bay because if they’d landed it in the harbour or even in Errelough they would have to
had pay a toll and harbour dues so Ellistrin and it’s inlets beside Dogs Bay were more favoured for the avoidance of
such dues and tolls. In this work we see the two girls with creels on their back and the young boy looking out to the
boats at sea concerned about their families safe landing with a heavy storm approaching.
Our thanks to Ciaran MacGonigal whose previous writings formed the basis of this catalogue entry.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

49
43 WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT ROI RBC (1858-1932)
Back from the Fair
Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 45cm (12 x 17¾’’)
Signed
Not to be confused with the similiarly named topographical artist W.H.Bartlett (1809-1854), little appears to be known
about this accomplished painter. His numerous Irish scenes concentrate primarily on the lives and activities of fisherfolk
on the western coast, such as gathering kelp; unloading turf; and farmers moving stock, of which the present work is a
fine example.
€ 5,000 - 7,000

50
45 FRANK MCKELVEY RHA RUA (1895-1974)
Lady with Green Drop Earrings
Watercolour, 33 x 25cm (13 x 10’’)
€ 300 - 500
44 SEÁN KEATING PRHA (1889-1977)
Portrait of Movita
Charcoal and pastel, 27 x 29cm (shaped) (10½ x
11½’’)
Signed
Maria ‘Movita’ Castaneda was a Mexican actress
who starred in numerous Hollywood films includ-
ing “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935) and the John
Wayne western “Fort Apache” (1948).
Motiva came to Ireland in the 1940s as the singing
partner of boxer, singer and playboy Jack Doyle
(1913 - 1978). They were married in a celebrity
wedding in Westland Row Church in Dublin. They
were famed as a double act on stage which drew
sell-out crowds when they toured the country. The
couple divorced in 1945 and Movita went on to
marry the actor Marlon Brando.
Sean Keating would have known Movita and Doyle
through the Dublin social scene, particularly as
they were fellow habitues of the Wicklow Hotel.
Movita died in 2015 at the age of 98.
€ 1,200 - 1,600

51
Important Irish Art | 27th March 2019
46 MAY GUINNESS (1863-1955)
Portrait of a Woman
Exhibited: Dublin, IMMA, ‘Analysing Cubism’, February/May 2013; Cork, Crawford Gallery, June/September 2013 and
Banbridge, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, September/November 2013.
Literature: ‘Analysing Cubism’ 2013, full page illustration, p.31.
This undated work is likely to have been painted after 1922 when Guinness had thoroughly familiarised herself with
modern French painting. She studied with the cubist Andre Lhote from 1922 to 1925 but had already spent many years in
France. Born in 1863, Guinness first visited Paris before 1910 where she studied art with the Dutch artist Kees Van Don-
gen, an expressionist painter. She continued to visit the city regularly and to develop her understanding of modernism
right into her sixties and beyond.
This portrait depicts a young woman wearing a bright strikingly modern costume of coloured stripes with a pink band
of material across her head. Her hands are held dutifully in her lap while her detached expression suggests the ennui
associated with posing for long periods. Although called a portrait the work can be considered in terms of its abstract
design and use of form. Guinness was strongly influenced by French expressionism or Fauvism and especially by the work
of Henri Matisse and Van Dongen. This is evident in this painting. The thinly applied paint with its flat texture suggests
the technique of fresco painting. It is a style that Matisse used in a number of his paintings most notably in his Portrait of
André Derain (1905, Tate) which was shown in the inaugural Fauve exhibition at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. Guinness
painted murals at her family home, Tibradden House in the 1920s (now destroyed) in which she may have deployed a sim-
ilar effect. The strong pinks and oranges of the shadows cast on the face in ‘Portrait of A Woman’ are typical of Fauvist art
which exaggerates the effects of light and shade to create highly decorative and expressive paintings. Guinness was well
aware of this idea. Her one-woman exhibition in London in 1922 was called ‘Decorative Paintings and Drawings’. In this
painting she builds up the composition in blocks of strong colour to create a consciously modern work of art that exudes
the artist’s energy and freshness of vision.
Dr Roisin Kennedy
€ 5,000 - 8,000

52
47 GERARD DILLON (1916-1971)
‘The Wonderful Farm Machine’
Mixed media on board, 56 x 76.5cm (22 x 30’’)
Signed
Exhibited: ‘Gerard Dillon, New Collages’ the Dawson Gallery, 1-17th May 1969, Cat No. 11
From 1965 following a series of traumatic events in Gerard Dillon’s life, a clown and later a Pierrot figure
appeared in his works that lasted until his last series of prints in 1970. Following the deaths of his three
brothers the clown featured in mixed media works but in 1967 following a heart attack, a masked pierrot
was adopted as his alter ego as he feared his own mortality. Reflecting on his own mortality and self- iden-
tity he went on a journey in search for answers looking on his past, present and future life involving his
subconscious dreams. Exhibited in 1969, ‘The Wonderful Farm Machine’ represents the artists final phase
of the journey. The forty-four collages at the exhibition at The Dawson Gallery contain complex symbolism
evoking messages that are ambiguous and are open to interpretation. The exhibition was a success from a
selling point of view and critics referenced the gaiety of the pierrots with one critic introducing his exhibition
with the headline, ‘Gay World of Gerard Dillon.’ (Evening Herald, 5.5.69)
‘The Wonderful Farm Machine’ is similar in style and content to ‘Clowns in a Bog’. Although this work was
not chosen to be included in the exhibition it was almost certainly executed at the same time. Both collages
depict two pierrots in a west of Ireland landscape with a farm machine and exemplify the artist’s passion
for image making. In this composition cut out shapes of shadows, birds, machines, clouds, and clothes are
embellished with chalk to add depth and enhance the surface of the image. In the foreground texture of
hay is achieved by combing through wet paint. The colour, lines, cutouts and texture combine to create
intensity to an otherwise flat painting.
The machine resembles a combine harvester from another world. On the left a pierrot appears to be jump-
ing with delight at the sight of a bird flying over him. Another bird hovers over a seated pierrot in a striped
top wearing a hat. The seated pierrot appears at ease controlling the farm machine from a single handle.
Influenced by Chagall, whose works were a dreamy reverie of life in his home village of Vitebsk, Dillon sets
his own reverie of life of imaginative joy and ease in a west of Ireland landscape. The image may also rep-
resent Dillon dealing with self-identification in face of his mortality. As a homosexual, Dillon had learned
to come to terms with his desires in a situation of illegality, prejudice, ignorance and social hostility. In the
1960’s homosexuality was never spoken about in public and Dillon had successfully concealed this side of
his life during his lifetime. But in his dream world, he was free to reference his sexuality without being a
threat to social order living in the constraints of Catholic Ireland. In ‘Clowns in a Bog’ the pierrots appear
effeminate and exude confidence in a romantic western landscape. In this collage, the pierrot figures are
depicted elated and relaxed. The mood is light-hearted and as the Evening Herald critic observed, ‘there
is gaiety’ in this image. But equally the birds could symbolize freedom. In both collages, Dillon address the
aesthetic of camp and sexual liberation. Here the pierrots are depicted relaxed, confident and free in a
Connemara landscape, where Dillon said ‘one could live… forever.’ (‘Dear Tourist’, Ireland of the Welcomes,
May-June, 1955 pg.33).
Karen Reihill, February 2019
€ 10,000 - 15,000

53

54
‘A Load of Hay’
Oil on board, 26 x 29cm (10½ x 11¼’’)
Signed; inscribed with title verso
Exhibited: Dublin, The Dawson Gallery, 1957, ‘Gerard Dillon’ Cat No.10
Throughout the 1950’s Dillon divided his time between London and Ireland visiting family in Belfast and
spending time in the West of Ireland to source out subject matter for his exhibitions. Connemara scenes ap-
peared on the surface to be idyllic but their narrative sometimes alluded to messages relating to the present
and past. Some scenes focused on early Christian sites, ‘MacDara’s Island’ or as in this case past traditional
farming techniques of the local people.
In the Ireland of the 1950’s a stagnation of agricultural modernization was a result of the depression which
led to high unemployment and emigration. Isolated farms in Connemara lacked piped water and the two-
wheeled cart took on several roles as it adapted to the soft turf bogs and the steep mountain sides. Visiting
remote farms, Dillon observed families who stayed behind and recorded their customs and bonds of friend-
ship as they supported one another during the harvest cycle.
Exhibited in Dillon’s solo exhibition at The Dawson Gallery in 1957, ‘A Load of Hay’ depicts the end of the pro-
cess of haymaking which involved hay being drawn in from meadows on carts; asses, and ponies to a corner
of a farmhouse where it was made into ricks in preparation for the winter. The viewer is confronted by a figure
facing away from us pulling a stack of hay on a box cart. The focus is on the stack of hay and the skill of those
who created it. In the 1950’s these specialized men were referred to as ‘the builder’ and ‘the dresser’ of a
load of hay. After the hay is dry a pitcher throws it onto the center of a cart while another farmer, ‘the builder’
quickly works to ‘tramp’ the hay into a stack. Young children are encouraged to join in on the ‘tramping’ of
the hay. When a stack reaches a certain height, the hay is then ready to be ‘dressed’. An experienced older
member of the family would usually do the dressing. This involved standing back and viewing the stack from a
distance and advising the builder on the stack from a distance where more hay was required. When this job is
complete, the hay stack is finally tied down with hay ropes to keep it secure as the pony and farmer transport
the hay to the farmhouse.
‘A Load of Hay’ is a scene from Ireland’s past. Baling machines were introduced and mechanized hay gathering
and packing led to less reliance on individual skills and the communal activity of haymaking on the agricultural
calendar disappeared. Today in unpredictable weather conditions silage has replaced hay. In some towns
however, haymaking festivals have been introduced to educate the next generation on skills from the past
and those who were involved in the forgotten art of haymaking.
Karen Reihill, February 2019
€ 8,000 - 12,000

55

56
50 MARKEY ROBINSON (1918-1999)
Five Boats
Oil on card, 10 x 33cm (4 x 13’’)
Signed
€ 600 - 1,000
49 GLADYS MACCABE HRUA ROI FRSA
(1918-2018)
Farm Scene
Oil on board, 40 x 50cm (15¾ x 19¾’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

57
51 MAURICE MACGONIGAL PRHA (1900-1979)
Coastal Scene, West of Ireland
Oil on board, 30 x 36cm (11¾ x 14¼’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

58
52 PETER COLLIS RHA (1929-2012)
Still Life with Fruit, Bottle and Blue and White Cup
Oil on canvas, 63 x 76cm (24¾ x 30’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 4,000

59
53 HENRY ROBERTSON CRAIG RHA (1916-1984)
H.E. Mr. Leopold Senghor, President of Senegal, in Procession in the Champs Elysees, Paris
Oil on canvas, 60 x 101cm (23½ x 39¾’’)
Signed; also signed, inscribed and with oeuvre number RC545 on stretcher verso
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906 – 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist who for two decades served
as the first president of Senegal (1960–80). Ideologically an African socialist, he was the founder of the Senegalese Demo-
cratic Bloc party.
In 1983 Senghor was elected as a member of the Académie française, at the 16th seat where he succeeded Antoine de
Lévis Mirepoix. He was the first African to sit at the Académie. Although a socialist, Senghor avoided the Marxist and an-
ti-Western ideology that had become popular in post-colonial Africa, favouring the maintenance of close ties with France
and the western world. This is seen by many as a contributing factor to Senegal’s political stability: it remains one of the
few African nations never to have had a coup, and always to have had a peaceful transfer of power.
On 31 December 1980, he retired as President in favour of his prime minister, Abdou Diouf. On news of his death in 2001,
Jacques Chirac is quoted as saying “Poetry has lost one of its masters, Senegal a statesman, Africa a visionary and France
a friend.”
€ 3,000 - 4,000

60
55 JOHN LUKE RUA (1906 -1975)
Nude Male
Oil on board, 69 x 23cm (27 x 9’’)
Provenance: Estate of the artist; Private Collection.
Exhibited: John Luke (1906-1975), Ulster Museum, Belfast and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 27 January–4 March 1978 (no. 4); John
Luke: Work from The Studio, The Bell Gallery, Belfast, February–March 1980 (no. 3)
€ 4,000 - 6,000
Born into a working-class part of north Belfast John Luke initially left school to work in the city’s shipyards and then its linen mills.
His extraordinary talent at drawing brought him to Belfast School of Art when he was still a teenager. After enrolling in evening
classes his teachers encouraged him to become a full-time student. In 1927, after wining prizes at the Sorella Art Exhibition and the
Royal Dublin Society’s Taylor Art Competition, Luke won the prestigious Dunville Art Scholarship, which would enable him to study
at the Slade School of Fine Art in London for the next three years.
This ‘Male Nude’ was painted at the Slade under the tutelage of Henry Tonks, one of the most influential teachers of drawing in the
early twentieth century. It was completed in the ‘life painting’ class and its combination of incredibly fine drawing and tiny feathery
cross-hatched brushstrokes, to build up light and shade, demonstrates Luke’s outstanding abilities as a draughtsman. Luke later
recalled that Tonks had initially been critical of his drawings, stating ‘these are rather good, as far as they go, but there’s no form in
any of them’, and subsequently Luke concentrated all his efforts to perfect his drawing skills.
The striking facial features of this male nude would later be re-used for the central figure in Luke’s painting ‘The Rehearsal’, which
was commissioned by the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (now Ulster Museum) in 1948 as a demonstration of the tempera tech-
nique. Its anatomical fidelity also recalls Tonk’s drawings especially the male nudes he made as part of his work recording wounded
veterans during the First World War. Tonks had initially trained as a surgeon and according to his biographer ‘used his anatomical
knowledge to teach life drawing as a swift and intelligent activity’. Luke drew and painted many male nudes at the Slade employing
a variety of different materials. A further example is his ‘Seated Figure’ (lot 54 above) which is quickly, and brilliantly, sketched with
chalks. Tonks encouraged his students to work with pastels and chalks when drawing from life (like the old masters). Whether in
chalk or oil paint Luke fully realized Tonk’s desire to see the model as a ‘corporeous unity’, to render the ‘flesh’ so it was almost
tactile.
Dr. Joseph McBrinn
Belfast School of Art
Ulster University
54 JOHN LUKE RUA (1906-1975)
Seated Figure
Pencil and chalk, 39.5 x 31cm (15½ x 12¼’’)
Provenance: Estate of the artist; Private
Collection.
Exhibited: John Luke (1906-1975), Ulster
Museum, Belfast and Douglas Hyde
Gallery, Dublin, 27 January–4 March 1978
(no. 79); John Luke: Work from The Studio,
The Bell Gallery, Belfast, February–March
1980 (no. 23)
€ 1,000 - 1,500

61

62
57 MICHAEL HEALY (1873-1941)
Dubliners - ‘Man Walking’
Watercolour, 13.5 x 7.5cm (5¼ x 3’’)
€ 300 - 500
56 MICHAEL HEALY (1873-1941)
Dubliners - ‘Man Reading a Newspaper’ and
‘Man Beside a Tree’
Two watercolours, 17.7 x 11.5cm (7 x 4½’’) and
15.3 x 10cm (6 x 4’’). (2)
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
€ 600 - 1,000

63
58 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA (1915 - 1980)
Seagull and Rose
Oil on canvas, 32 x 40cms (12 x 15”)
Signed
Cork artist Patrick Hennessy’s painting skills were recognised early in his
career, winning a scholarship to study at Dundee College in Scotland in
the mid 1930s, and a further one which enabled him to travel to Paris and
Rome. During his time at Dundee he met his future partner, artist Henry
Robertson Craig and both were taught by James McIntosh Patrick RSA.
Hennessy travelled widely throughout Europe and to Morocco, but re-
turned to Ireland in 1939, dividing his time between Cork and Dublin,
where he joined the Society of Dublin Painters and exhibited regularly at
the Hendriks Gallery. From 1941 he exhibited regularly at the RHA and he
was elected a member of the Academy in 1949. His style has been associ-
ated with Surrealism while his subjects range from still life and interiors to
landscapes and portraits.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

64
59 ARTHUR ARMSTRONG RHA (1924-1996)
Rocky Landscape
Oil on board, 91 x 107cm (35¾ x 42’’)
Signed; inscribed with title verso
Arts Council of Northern Ireland label verso, Catalogue No.20
€ 3,000 - 5,000

65
60 PATRICK PYE RHA (1929 - 2018)
‘Crossroads at Illescas’
Tempera on gesso on board, 51 x 60cm (20 x 23”)
Signed and inscribed with title verso.
Provenance: With Ritchie Hendriks Gallery Dublin, April 1970,
where purchased by the present owners.
Illescas is a peninsula in northwestern Peru.
€ 2,500 - 3,500

66
62 COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983)
Early Morning, Albany
Watercolour, 14 x 14cm (5½ x 5½”)
Signed with monogram, and titled verso
Exhibited: Colin Middleton Exhibition, Rossmoyne,
Perth, Western Australia, August- September 1972,
label verso
€ 800 - 1,200
61 COLIN MIDDLETON MBE RHA RUA (1910 - 1983)
Mountain Landscape, Santa Brigida
Watercolour, 18 x 18cm (7 x 7”)
Signed with monogram
Exhibited: Colin Middleton Exhibition, Rossmoyne,
Perth, Western Australia, August- September 1972,
no. 2, label verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500

67
63 CAMILLE SOUTER HRHA (B.1929)
Pale Shapes
Oil on Japanese Tissue, 32 x 42.5cm (12½ x 16¾’’)
Provenance: With Peppercanister Gallery label verso; Collection of
Sir Basil Goulding.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

68
64 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983)
The Ventriloquist
Signed ‘Colin M’, inscribed with title and dated October 1947 verso, together with the number
‘4’
Provenance: Private Collection, Dublin.
‘The Ventriloquist’, painted in October 1947, was one of probably only eight canvases Colin
Middleton completed during the year he spent at John Middleton Murry’s community farm in
Thelnetham, on the border of Suffolk and Norfolk. During this period Middleton was moving
gradually towards a new manner of working, away from a more precisely drawn and high-
ly-finished surface towards a powerfully expressionist style that responded to the angst and
uncertainty of the post-war world.
‘The Ventriloquist’ expresses Middleton’s anger at inequality and poverty, as well as responding
to the vulnerability of people dispossessed by the war. Like ‘Lazarus’, completed earlier in the
same year, this is a painting driven by a political or social narrative and it demonstrates the
universality of Middleton’s vision. The expressive distortions of form and emotive use of colour,
heightened through a rhythmically agitated paint surface, look forward to the style that would domi-
nate Middleton’s work from the summer of 1948 for over a decade.
It is interesting to compare ‘The Ventriloquist’ with ‘The Promised Land’, painted in the same
month, in which two figures are set against an apparently hostile, barren landscape. While the
former clearly sets out Middleton’s political principles and his sympathy for those without a
voice and on the edges of society, the latter also indicates the more implicit narrative of the
figure paintings he was about to embark on, in which anger and doubt are often balanced by
suggestions of hope, spiritual strength and the power of redemption.
Dickon Hall, February 2019
€ 30,000 - 40,000

69

70
65 BASIL IVAN RÁKÓCZI (1908-1979)
Cupidon and Psyche (c.1949)
Watercolour on paper, 55 x 74cm (21½ x 29’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200
66 BASIL IVAN RÁKÓCZI (1908-1979)
Jupiter and Ganymede
Watercolour on paper, 62 x 48cm (24½ x 19’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

71
67 DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974)
Gleneely, Co. Donegal
Oil on board, 38.5 x 39cm (15¼ x 15½’’)
Signed
€ 7,000 - 10,000

72
68 FREDERICK EDWARD MCWILLIAM RA (1909-1992)
Leg Figure (1977)
Bronze, 25.5 x 22cm (10 x 8.75”)
Signed with initials and numbered 1/5
Provenance: Private Collection, Dublin.
After ‘Women of Belfast’ and ‘Woman in a Bomb-blast’ and the Banners
series, McWilliam began his series of Legs in 1977. It must have been a relief
for the sculptor to turn from the deeply emotional subject matter of the
Troubles to the beauty and playfulness of womens Legs. In fact, McWilliam
had begun ‘One pair of Legs’ and ‘Two pairs of Legs’ in 1971, before he began
‘Women of Belfast’ and these legs informed his women caught in a bomb-
blast and thrown off balance.
Legs allowed McWilliam the freedom to model legs and attach these to
different bodies and heads, such as a fish head resulting in the surrealist
figure ‘Lady into Fish’ and ‘Magrittes Mermaid’ or ‘Legs with fig-leaf’. One of
this series was ‘Leg Figure D’ which was included in the Tate retrospective
exhibition of 1989. Patrick Heron wrote to McWilliam after visiting the Tate
retrospective of his friends work: I was fascinated by the hands and feet in all
those 70s figures. Nobody else in this country has been able to do hands and
feet like yours.
McWilliam had countless drawings of womens feet and legs and collected
large advertising posters for womens stockings, which hung on his studio
wall. The sculptor can achieve such expression and feeling in splayed toes
and outstretched legs, as in ‘Leg Figure D’ which resulted in Herons admiring
observation. The Leg series continued from 1977 until 1981, ending with Ms
Orissa which combined ‘Legs Upended’ with a clothed head and shoulders,
again masking identification. This series resulted in two large sculptures
‘Umbilicus’, FE McWilliam Gallery and the large sculpture of the ‘Judo Players’,
Derry City Council.
Dr Denise Ferran
€ 6,000 - 10,000

73

74
70 PATRICK O’REILLY (B.1957)
Ballerina Bear
Bronze, 10.5cm (4’’)
Signed
€ 300 - 500
69 ANA DUNCAN (20TH/21ST CENTURY)
Ovum
Bronze, 21cm high (8¼’’), on a limestone base
Signed and numbered 7/9
€ 1,000 - 1,500

75
71 JOHN BEHAN RHA (B.1938)
A Flight of Birds
Bronze, on a stone base, 48.8cm high (19¼’’)
Unique
€ 3,000 - 5,000

72 WALTER FREDERICK OSBORNE RHA ROI (1859-1903)
A Bit of Sutton Courtney - A Village by the Thames
Oil on panel, 41 x 32cm (16 x 12½’’)
Provenance: The Rowley Gallery stamp verso, 87 Campden Street, Kensington Church Street, London, whence
purchased in the 1920s; thence by descent.
Exhibited: The Dublin Art Club, 1887, Catalogue No.129.
Literature: Sheehy, Jeanne, ‘Walter Osborne’, Gifford & Craven, Ballycotton 1974, p.121, no.174; Bodkin, Thomas,
‘Four Irish Landscape Painters’, Dublin and London, 1920, Appendix XI, p.133; le Harival, Adrian and Michael Wynne,
‘Acquisitions, 1984-86, National Gallery of Ireland’, Dublin, 1986, p.68, illustrated fig.60b.
(note: Osborne titled this picture with the spelling ‘Sutton Courtney’ and this spelling will be used when referring to
the painting. The correct spelling of the village is Sutton Courtenay.)
€ 60,000 - 80,000
Journeying along the river Thames, Cork-born artist Robert Gibbings wrote in 1940 that: “Sutton’s Pool by Sut-
ton Courtenay is a fairy world of falling waters. By moonlight… it is a setting for the rarer moments in life”. Gib-
bings did not linger in the village, “leaving the last golden hours of evening to the boys fishing on the weirs” (1).
In 1887, Walter Osborne had stayed at Sutton Courtenay (then in Berkshire but today in Oxfordshire) and
painted the present picture ‘A Bit of Sutton Courtney, A Village by the Thames’. It shows a boy leaning against a
wooden railing, fishing, while across the river a woman stands and tall red buildings are lit by sunlight. Walter
Osborne observes the scene meticulously and the picture has a wealth of detail and a strong human presence.
In spite of its rural setting, the painting is aflame with warm, glowing reds and browns, almost unprecedented
in Irish art at this time.
Having earlier studied in Dublin and Antwerp and painted in Brittany, Osborne spent much of the second half
of the 1880s working in English villages and towns, painting a series of village, farming and coastal scenes.
These are some of the finest pictures of his career. He painted much in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, for instance
at Newbury, Uffington, Didcot and on the Downs. Sometimes he had the company of fellow artist Blandford
Fletcher and his friend from Dublin, writer Stephen Gwynn, was in nearby Oxford, 1882-1886, and was teaching
at Bradfield School in 1888 (2).
Sutton Courtenay was a tranquil and picturesque village just south of Abingdon and north of Didcot, situated
in a curve in the river Thames. It had been settled by the Saxons, who built a causeway on the river. In the
twelfth century, the village took the name of the Courtenay family, who lived in the manor (3). All Saints’ Church
and other fine buildings date from later centuries (4). In the mid-19th century, many villagers were employed
in the local paper mill and in domestic service. The most striking features of the village were the causeway and
weirs that separated the millstream from the Sutton Pools and Osborne was attracted to the streams where
boys fished.
From his early days in Ireland, he had depicted several pictures of lads fishing in a stream or canal (5). In ‘A Bit
of Sutton Courtney’, the figure is placed close to the viewer, leaning against a wooden fence. He holds a fishing
rod and looks down at the river. He wears a kind of deer-stalker hat, white shirt and brown waistcoat. Sunshine
falls upon his cheek and sleeve. His figure is viewed from behind and his legs are cut by the lower edge of the
picture, suggesting a photographic influence. Across the river, a woman with hat and violet apron stands upon
the river bank looking at the barge. Even though the figures are separated by the river, visual and, perhaps,
emotional affinities between them are evoked – both looking down and both holding a rod or a stick.
There is a wealth of detail in the scene: the rough grain of the sturdy wooden fence, with an upright post just
visible behind the boy’s legs; the reflections and ripples in the river and the little fishing float; the tall build-

77

78
ings with steep roofs, including the uneven structure of the
barn and an old cart with large wheels. Although the sky in the
background is overcast, here Osborne was inspired by the rich
tones of English buildings that glowed warmly in the sunshine:
reds and russets of brick walls, brown of timber and maroons of
roof tiles, as well as ochre clay and verdant foliage. A Bit of Sut-
ton Courtney is enlivened further by little points of colour; the
mauve of the woman’s apron, reds, greens, blues, whites and
yellows in the barge and reflected in the water; the stripes of
the upright post; red in the boy’s cheek and pocket; the mauve
patch on the railing; and the blue of the float.
Equally, Osborne’s brushwork is lively and varied: crisp and
controlled in some areas, fluid and expressive in others. The
‘square brush style’ is employed, for example, in parts of the
boy’s clothing, the woman’s apron and the walls of the barn.
Meanwhile, the ripples are painted in a softer, more lyrical way
and parts of the foliage and undergrowth are more ‘blurred’, for
instance, in the rough grass draped over the river bank.
If we look closely at the painting, we notice an interesting detail:
the impastoed brushstrokes that depict the fence are visible
beneath the figure of the boy. This suggests that Osborne may
have added him to the picture at a later date than the land-
scape. This was not an unusual practice amongst painters, such
as Canaletto or Caspar Friedrich (6), but Osborne may have
decided to include the figure to give a greater sense of focus,
psychological interest and human warmth to his composition.
The motif of the figure, viewed from behind, looking into the
picture, the Rückenfigur of German Romanticism, can be seen
in the paintings of Caspar Friedrich and in Realist pictures by
François Bonvin, Henri de Braekeleer and Joseph M. Kavanagh. As in several Osborne pictures of the period, for instance
‘Counting the Flock’, 1887 (sold at Adam’s, 30th May 2018) (7), the figure viewed from behind is an individual, but also an
archetype, engaging the viewer and adding a sense of mystery.
‘A Bit of Sutton Courtney’ is painted on a wood panel and is signed lower right with the squared capital letters which the
artist employed in this period. Osborne exhibited the picture at the Dublin Art Club (of which he was a co-founder), in
1887, modestly priced at twelve guineas. He made a tiny pencil drawing after the painting, the figure being outlined in ink
(in sketchbook in NGI, catalogue number 19, 202, p.14).
Sutton Courtenay continued to attract Irish and other artists and writers. John Lavery painted Asquith in an 1891 Eliza-
beth boat on the river in 1917 (Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane). George Orwell fished there as a boy. Francis S. Walker
illustrated a book on the Thames in 1891 (8) and, as noted above, Robert Gibbings passed through Sutton Courtenay and
wrote lyrically about it.
Julian Campbell, January 2019
1) Robert Gibbings, Sweet Thames Run Softly, London 1940, p.106.
2) Jeanne Sheehy, Walter Osborne, NGI, 1983, p.77; and J. Sheehy, Walter Osborne, Ballycotton, 1974, p.22.
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Courtenay
4) Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Berkshire, Penguin 1966, All Saints’ Church and the Norman Hall were built in the late 12th century, and
the Abbey about 1300.
5) Eg. A Glade in the Phoenix Park, exhibited RHA 1880.
6) Canaletto seems to have painted the background of his Grand Canal series first, then added the figures afterwards. See also Joseph M. Kavanaggh,
Sheep in a Snowy Field, 1895, where the horizon line is visible beneath the bodies of the sheep. (‘Exhibition of Irish Paintings and Sculptures’, Gorry Gallery,
Dublin 2018, no.50.)
7) See Counting the Flock, 1887, Important Irish Art, Adam’s, 30th May 2018, lot 32; and Newbury, 1887; Joe the Swineherd, 1890; and The Railway
Station, Hastings.
8) William Senior, The Thames from Oxford to the Tower, with illustrations by Francis Sylvester Walker, London 1891.
I am very grateful to Niamh MacNally, Anne Hodge and Andrew Moore, National Gallery of Ireland; John Hutchinson; and Maria O’Mahony
for assistance in my research. JC.
Photograph courtesy of The National Gallery of Ireland

79

80
73 FRANK MCKELVEY RHA RUA (1895-1974)
By-Road, Co. Antrim
Signed
€ 4,000 - 6,000

81
74 JAMES HUMBERT CRAIG RHA RUA (1877-1944)
Near Bordeaux
Oil on board, 42 x 58cm (16½ x 22¾’’)
Signed, inscribed verso
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, label verso
€ 4,000 - 6,000

82
76 FLORA H. MITCHELL (1890-1973)
‘Gateway of Tailors Hall- demolished 1955’
Watercolour, 23 x 28 cm
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin,
label verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500
‘House off Werburgh Street, Where Swift
Was Born - 1667’
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery,
Dublin, label verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600

83
St. Andrew’s Street, Dublin
Dublin, label verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500
Taylors of Thomas Street- Dublin
Dublin, label verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500

84
79 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA (1916-2012)
St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin
Watercolour, 25.5 x 35.5cm (9¾ x 14’’)
Signed, dated 1990 verso
Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
€ 5,000 - 7,000

85
Temple Street, Dublin - A View from St. George’s Church
Gouache, 38 x 50cm (15 x 19¾’’)
€ 6,000 - 10,000

86
Study Towards an Image of W.B. Yeats [52]
Etching, 49.5 x 44cm; sheet 75 x 55.5cm (29½
x 22’’)
Artist’s proof X;
Label Verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600
Etching, 49.5 x 44cm; sheet 75 x 55.5cm (29½ x
22’’)
Artist’s proof X;
Label Verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600

87
Etching, 49.5 x 44cm; sheet 75 x 55.5cm (29½
x 22’’)
Artist’s proof 10/21;
Label Verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600
The Táin, Deer among Dolmens
Lithographic brush drawing, 54 x 38cm (21¼
x 15’’)
Signed, numbered 4/70 and dated 1969
€ 1,500 - 2,000

88
86 PATRICK PYE RHA (1929-2018)
An Abraham Triptych
Etching, 37 x 51cm (14½ x 20’’)
Signed, inscribed and numbered 7/9
Provenance: With David Hendricks
Gallery, Dublin, label verso
€ 400 - 600
Procession
Lithograph, 56 x 76cm (22 x 30’’)
Signed; Artist’s Proof, numbered 4/15
€ 1,500 - 2,000

89
Being (W1400)
Watercolour on paper, 51 x 36 cm (20 x 14”)
Provenance: Wityh Taylor Galleries, Dublin, label verso
€ 10,000 - 15,000

90
88 GEORGE RUSSELL AE (1867-1935)
Children on the Beach, Donegal Bay
Signed with monogram and dated 1919
In 1904, having attended an exhibition in Dublin in which the paintings of AE were displayed alongside those
of Constance Gore-Booth and Casimir Dunin-Markievicz, Joseph Holloway reflected upon the works of AE. The
entry from the diary of the architect and raconteur reads; “If ever the Celtic spirit of dreaminess and longing
for something that is neither of land nor sea was translated onto canvas, here that longing and dreaminess
surely was”.
This atmospheric painting dated 1919 and signed with AE’s distinctive monogram, seems the perfect coun-
terpart to that earlier reflection. AE spent summers in the west and northwest of Ireland and Donegal came
to be the destination that he particularly favoured. ‘Children on the beach, Donegal Bay’ was painted in what
was a particularly frenetic period for the artist. AE’s best-known book ‘The Candle of Vision’ had recently been
published and he would have been busy in his role as editor for the Irish Homestead.
Importantly, this work was also painted the year that the Irish War of Independence began. While deeply
invested in the campaign for independence, AE was ultimately a pacifist and sought to further the cause in
his role as an artist and thinker. AE took refuge not only in the process of painting but also the worlds that he
invented therein. There is a serenity to this twilight scene that exemplifies Russell’s predilection for mauve,
rose and amethyst, all of which are hues that feature frequently in his poetry.
Pádraic E. Moore, February 2019
€ 7,000 - 10,000

91

92
90 CHARLES LAMB RHA (1893-1944)
Galway Bay
€ 2,000 - 3,000
89 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON RHA
(1878-1964)
The Currach on Voyage to Iona
Oil on board, 20 x 25.7cm (7¾ x 10’’)
Signed with initials; also signed and inscribed
on artist’s label verso
Iona is a small island off the Ross of Mull on the
western coast of Scotland. St. Colmcille (Colum-
ba) founded an abbey on the island and is
credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland.
In 563, he travelled with twelve companions, in
a wicker currach covered with leather, from Ire-
land, landing on the Kintyre Peninsula before
travelling on to Iona.
€ 700 - 1,000

93
91 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON RHA (1878-1964)
Lake and Mountains, Northern Italy
Oil on canvas board, 38.5 x 47.5cm (14¼ x 18¾’’)
€ 4,000 - 6,000

94
92 ALOYSIUS O’KELLY (1853-1936)
Expectation, West of Ireland
Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 62.5cm (29.5 x 24.4”)
Signed
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1881, Cat. No. 323; “Aloysius O’Kelly Retrospective Exhibition” The Hugh
Lane Gallery, Dublin Nov 1999 - Jan 2000, Cat. No. 5
Literature: “Aloysius O’Kelly - Re-orientations” by Niamh O’Sullivan (1999) full page illustration p.19; “Irish Rural
Interiors in Art” by Claudia Kinmonth (2006) p.85, full page illustration p.86
This painting provides an indirect commentary on many aspects of life in the west of Ireland in the late nine-
teenth century. O’Kelly’s scenes of domestic contentment promoted a new image of the peasantry that coun-
termanded the prevailing stereotypes of the Irish. The thatched cottage stood for simplicity and community
solidarity - for traditional values and national virtues embodying the concept of the state-in-waiting. Making the
homes of Ireland Irish was considered analogous to the creation of the nation. O’Kelly’s mother and child, set in
a prosperous traditional Irish cottage, is thus politically redemptive.
The geraniums are in full bloom, the turf glows in the fire, and the over-flowing bowl of potatoes contrasts with
more traditional images of want. In contrast to the landless labourers who lived in small one-roomed cabins
(sharing the warmth with their few animals), this is an image of plenty, and full of promise. Even the title - ‘Expec-
tation, West of Ireland’ - is auspicious. The allegorisation of Ireland as woman is historically embedded in Irish
literature, but it also occurs in visual representation; here her role is clear. The toddler-boy is dressed in a transi-
tional garment, as his beautiful mother nurtures him towards manhood and, by implication, independence. (Up
to the age of puberty, boys were dressed like girls, in a dress or frock with a red or white flannel skirt, sewn at the
waist to a cotton or linen bodice which came to the calf, the bodice of which was buttoned up the back, and the
skirt pleated horizontally to allow for growth. The practice of dressing boys as girls was intended to deflect the
fairies from taking a boy child and leaving a changeling in his place.)
The little boy must have re-awakened memories for the painter of his dead nephew and godchild, Jamie, the off-
spring of a bigamous marriage between his brother, James and a young American girl. Little Jamie died in 1879,
at about the same age as this little boy. O’Kelly played an unusually intimate and protective role in this boy’s brief
life. It would seem therefore that this is also a personal image of loss.
Professor Niamh O’Sullivan
€ 40,000 - 60,000

95

96
93 RODERIC O’CONOR (1860-1940)
Nude Study, reclining
Charcoal on paper, 20.4 x 24cm (8 x 9½’’)
Provenance: Dr. Robelet, Neuil sur Layon;
Thierry & Lannon, Brest, Sale of 14th
October 2009.
€ 800 - 1,200
Frequent drawing from a posed life-model
was an essential part of Roderic O’Conor’s
studio practice, and it was from sketches
such as these that he developed ideas and
concepts for his paintings of both clothed
and unclothed models which he made in
his Paris studio. He had moved to the city
in 1904 following his well-documented
thirteen year association with Brittany.
It was in Paris that his relationship with
a young model, Renée Honta began,
and they eventually married in 1933 and
moved to the small town of Nueil-sur-Lay-
on in the Départment of Maine et Loire
in the far west of France. After O’Conor’s
death there in 1940, his widow became
his chief beneficiary under the terms of
his will, and she continued to live in the
splendid maison-de-maitre which had
been their home. When she died in 1955,
a local resident, Doctor Robelet acquired
a portfolio of O’Conor’s drawings, which
included these works and with others they
were subsequently sold by the auction
house of Thierry & Lannon in Brest, in
their sale of 14 October 2009.
Roy Johnston
94 RODERIC O’CONOR (1860-1940)
Nude Study, seated
Charcoal on paper, 24.5 x 27cm (9½ x
10½’’)
Provenance: Dr. Robelet, Neuil sur Layon;
Thierry & Lannon, Brest, Sale of 14th
October 2009.
€ 800 - 1,200

97
95 GEORGE RUSSELL, AE (1867- 1935)
The Kelp Gatherers
Oil on canvas, 40 x 52cm (15 x 20”)
Signed lower left
€ 4,000 - 6,000

98
96 BOB QUINN (B. 1948)
‘The Excuse’
Bronze, 49 x 30 cm (19 x 11¾’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

99
97 RORY BRESLIN (B.1963)
Mask of the Foyle
Bronze, 88.5cm high x 41.5cm wide (35 x 16’’)
Signed and Numbered 2/3
The Mask of the Foyle is a larger than life-size bronze interpretation of Edward Smyth’s River-God keystone, situated
on the Western end of the South facade of Dublin’s Custom House.
The visage of the Foyle is stubborn, ill-humoured and fierce. The prows of three ships link the castles, symbols of the
Derry Walls built by The Honourable The Irish Society as defences for early 17th century settlers from England and
Scotland. A broken cable of chain traverses the ornamentation while the rendition of the beard echoes the eddies,
swirls and ripples of the fastest-flowing river in Europe for its size.
When Smyth was approached in 1789 by Irish architect Henry Aaron Baker, to add sculpted elements to the trium-
phal arch planned for the Derry Walls, he revisited the designs he had made for the Dublin Custom House finished
a few years earlier, to illustrate the River Gods of the Foyle and Boyne. They closely match two of the sculpted heads
around the Custom House, though in the case of the Foyle head, there is less detail and the countenance a little less
fierce.
€ 7,000 - 10,000

100
98 TONY O’MALLEY HRHA (1913-2003)
Death by Water, from ‘The Waste Land’ - The Sea Silence
Oil on board, 122 x 61cm (48 x 24’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated (19)’84 verso
Although he was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1913, Tony O’Malley always regarded himself as being from,
and belonging to, two places: the Norman domain that incorporated Callan, his mother’s territory, and the “old
Gaelic” world of Clare Island, his father’s family home.
One of the most celebrated Irish artists of the 20th century, O’Malley was a modest, self-taught, quietly indus-
trious painter. When he was 19, he went to work for the then Munster & Leinster Bank. Around 1945 he was
diagnosed with TB, and it was during his long convalescence that he began to paint. A holiday in Cornwall in
1955 introduced him to the thriving, international artists’ colony in St Ives and, after premature retirement from
the bank on health grounds, he eventually took the plunge and moved there.
Gradually he developed his artistic voice, a form of representational abstraction that, following Gerard Manley
Hopkins, he referred to as “inscape” rather than landscape. It is generally agreed that he made his best work in
the 1980s. His pictorial grammar included an array of angular, darting, rhythmic forms, variously evoking the
movement of fish in water and the movement of water itself, the flight of birds across the sky and the staccato
sound of birdcalls against the landscape.
His father first brought him to Clare Island when he was in his teens. The reverse of this painting is liberally
inscribed with words from the Death by Water section of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Two overlapping sets of
writing in the artist’s hand suggest that he revisited, and perhaps revised, the painting, and that it had particu-
lar significance for him. It is entirely possible that he was commemorating the centenary of his paternal grand-
father’s death by drowning (he perished en route from the mainland to Clare Island in 1883). O’Malley returned
to the theme in a fine 1985 painted construction, ‘Sea Dirge – Full fathom five thy father lies /Of his bones are
coral made.’ This time the quotation is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. As it happens, Eliot plucked a quote
(“Those are pearls that were his eyes”) from that same verse in another section of The Waste Land.
Aidan Dunne, February 2019
€ 10,000 - 15,000

101

102
100 BARRIE COOKE HRHA (1931-2014)
Bos Queen
Mixed media on board, 13 x 25cm (5 x 9¾’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1974 verso
Provenance: With David Hendricks Gallery,
Dublin, Label verso
€ 600 - 1,000
99 PATRICK SCOTT HRHA (1921-2014)
Morning
Mixed media on canvas, 25.5 x 30cm (10 x 11¾’’)
Provenance: With the Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

103
101 SEAN MCSWEENEY RHA (1935-2018)
Yellow Bogland Field
Oil on board, 35.5 x 45cm (14 x 17¾’’)
Signed and dated (19)’88; also signed and inscribed verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000

104
102 BRIAN BALLARD RUA (B.1943)
Nude Study - Jude
Oil on canvas, 61 x 45cm (24 x 17¾’’)
Signed and dated 1989; inscribed verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000
103 BRIAN BALLARD RUA (B.1943)
Lady Against Red
Provenance: With the Solomon Gallery,
Dublin, label verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600

105
Important Irish Art | 27th March 2019
104 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA (1932-2016)
Reclining Female Nude
Oil on paper, 28 x 38cm (11 x 15’’)
Signed and dated (19)’85 by the artist verso
Provenance: From the collection of the late Gillian Bowler.
Mike Catto has written; ‘The nudes of Basil Blackshaw have a certain air of detachment about them.’ (Art in Ulster 2, 1977, p43). I disagree with this
interpretation because although I can see where such a reading comes from there is too remarkable a degree of connection evident between
artist and model in these nude representations. The sense of distance or detachment is at odds with the impact of the works. They have been
consciously embodied by Blackshaw in this manner. He is a strong portraitist and is adept at capturing likenesses but his nudes are not executed
in this vein. In these it is the figure’s moment and opportunity to shine through in terms of expression. These nudes are faceless, nameless, yet
paradoxically full of character. They are collectively reliant on their expressive poses and the artist’s treatment of paint and compositional struc-
ture.
Blackshaw is definite in his approach; “…I want to avoid association with the subject. I want it to be a purely visual experience for the viewer…I want
it to please the eyes rather than bring up associations in the mind. When I paint a nude I don’t want them to see a girl thinking or sitting, I want it
be just a figure. I like the way Baselitz turned his figures upside down, when you see a man eating an orange, turn it round and it becomes some-
thing else. I wish I’d thought of it.” (‘Afterwords’, Ferran, 1999, p128). Brian Ferran has noted; ‘Although his model is before him, his more important
associations are the previous twenty paintings which he has made of the same model…These are densely complex paintings which possess
personality and a dynamism of their own.’ (Ferran, 1999, p122).
The artist has commented; ‘I want to be divorced a bit from the actual subject; not to make a replica but to make an equivalent.’ (McAvera, IAR,
2002). The most insightful and detailed assessment of the artist’s approach, is however, captured by the person closest to the subject, his life
model Jude Stephens; ‘His approach was to create a representative image, almost totally destroy it, and then recreate it. Within hours or even
minutes of my departure, I knew that he would return to the studio and obliterate the image, for only when I left could he produce the painting
for which he strove. In a sense the essence he sought only existed in his memory. He often apologised about this pattern of thesis, antithesis and
synthesis, reassuring me that he needed me to sit for him even though the resulting work would inevitably meet with rough treatment, because
without an image to destroy there could be no image to recreate.’ (Jude Stephens in Ferran, 1999, p85).
‘Reclining Nude’ has an elemental, almost archaeological feel to it. The figure occupies the composition but in a pose that suggests movement
and a sense of becoming. Her form emerges from the left of the page and stretches back towards the right. The cut-off composition emphasises
the sense of a found or emerging form. Her feet are beyond the confines of the page as is her left hand. Her facial features see little delineation,
her hair is akin to a dark shadow extended behind her head and indeed her entire form is captured only to the point of sufficient suggestion of
presence and not beyond. Nevertheless the figure does however have a strong manifestation even in this elemental existence. The painting is
powerful and dynamic within its severely limited palette range. It is at once linked to the classical tradition and yet thoroughly modern. ‘Blue Nude’
1985 was painted the same year and it also possesses a power of mastery of the figure. The blue of the title is the dominant colour with the back-
ground a deep midnight blue which casts its hue upon the model.
Marianne O’Kane Boal
€ 2,000 - 4,000

106
105 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA (1932-2016),
The Lovers, After Courbet
Signed verso
Exhibited: Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast, One Man Show, March 1981; label verso with title ‘After Courbet’.
Literature: ‘Basil Blackshaw - Painter’ edited by Brian Ferran, Illustrated Plate 108, pg. 102
Basil Blackshaw once told me “I steal from good artists and bad artists. It’s what you do with the theft is what matters.
Even a bad artist can help you to resolve a problem.” he said. ‘The Lovers’ or should we rename the painting ‘Gráinne
agus Gráinne’ is Blackshaw at his mischievous best - stealing an idea yet uniquely giving his ‘otherness’ to Courbet’s
interpretation of the same subject.
The work has an echo too of Irish artist Michael Farrell in his interpretation of Boucher’s sexually erotic and provocative
‘Mademoiselle O’ Murphy..’
Blackshaw’s painting is very much in the vein too of the Donegal Gaeltacht seanchaí Neidí Franc who habitually started
his storytelling seisiún with the refrain.. “Ní raibh mé riamh gan aon scéal ach dá mbéinn gan aon scéal do chumfainn
m’féin scéal” but suddenly ‘duende’ took hold and lifted the performer and listener into a celestial world.
Basil has created his own story in this painting. It too invokes thoughts of eroticism inspired by ‘Baudelaire’s ‘Fleurs
du Mal’ poetry. The physical presence is temporary ... the viewer enters another world once the eye falls on the lovers
whose depiction is ephemeral and emotionally charged.
Herein rest the foundations for a thesis on this most érotique oeuvre by Basil Blackshaw.
Eamonn Mallie, March 2019
A renegade and cowboy of the Irish art scene, Basil Blackshaw is known for pushing the boundaries of art and rep-
resentation. Blackshaw made a career from depicting the shunned and marginalised of society, bringing to the fore
subjects that many might have considered ‘tasteless’. In this, the painter found a comrade in Gustave Courbet, a French
Realist and radical working in the 19th century.
Despite his daring approach, Courbet ushered in a new reign of art in France and, for this, he would have gained respect
from Blackshaw. One of Courbet’s more scandalous works was his ‘Sleepers’, commissioned in 1866 for a wealthy Turk-
ish diplomat. Although erotic pieces were already in circulation, Courbet shocked the critics and viewers with this piece
as, unlike previous images of the subject, Courbet painted his work on a grand scale, affording it an importance which
was hitherto unprecedented. Such was the outrage at this lurid display, ‘Sleepers’ was mentioned in a police report of
1872 after its exhibition in a window and was used to demonstrate the lack of morality and principle held by the artist.
In his ode to Courbet, Blackshaw has taken his work one step further. Unlike Courbet, who titled his work ‘Sleepers’,
Blackshaw removes any pretence of ambiguity and boldly declares the piece as ‘The Lovers’. He strips away the non-es-
sential elements of luxury; the flowers, the discarded jewellery and the prettily painted glass, disallowing any distrac-
tion from his main subject.
In a wash of white and pink, the tousled bedsheets become inextricably linked to the bare flesh that so disrupted them,
whilst the figure of one woman blends into that of the second, highlighting the intimacy of their tryst. The broad, confi-
dent brushstrokes, indicative of Blackshaw’s style, unapologetically lay bare the physicality of this scene and force us to
confront one of the key characteristics of human nature. Nestled unashamedly in their comfort, ‘The Lovers’ lift the veil
on a topic often considered as indecorous and glorify a subject that, in terms of Blackshaw’s work, would have walked
hand in hand with the disparaged of society.
Helena Carlyle, March 2019
€ 20,000 - 40,000

107

108
107 MELANIE LE BROCQUY HRHA (1919-1918)
Standing Madonna and Child
Bronze, 24cm high (9½’’)
Signed with initials and numbered 3/10
€ 1,000 - 2,000
106 STEPHEN LAWLOR (B.1958)
Four Horses
A set of four bronzes, variously patinated, 11cm to 15cm (4¼
to 6’’)
Each signed with initials, dated (20)’05 and numbered 2/4
€ 1,500 - 2,500

109
108 PATRICK O’REILLY (B.1957)
Two Cows as Milk Cartons (2008)
Gilded bronze, 30 x 20 x 15.5cm high (11¾ x 8 x 6’’)
Signed, dated and numbered 1/1 (unique)
€ 1,800 - 2,400
108A ROBIN BUICK (B.1940)
Contemporary Man in the Environment
Bronze, 30cm high (11¾’’)
€ 800 - 1,200

110
109 WILLIAM MASON (1906-2002)
The Bait Diggers
Oil on board, 31.5 x 45cm (12¼ x 17¾’’)
€ 600 - 800
110 PAUL KELLY (B.1968)
Rocks and Sea, Scotch Point, Lambay
Oil on board, 40 x 50cm (15¾ x 19½’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated (20)’04 verso
Provenance: With the Solomon Gallery,
Dublin, label verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500

111
111 COLIN DAVIDSON PPRUA (B.1968)
Bodhran Player
Oil on board, 101 x 75cm (39¾ x 29½’’)
€ 5,000 - 8,000

112
113 FR. JACK P. HANLON (1913-1968)
Study of a Woman with a Parasol
Watercolour, 27 x 38cm (10½ x 15’’)
€ 1,500 - 2,000
112 NANO REID (1900-1981)
Landscape with Figures and Cattle
Signed
€ 1,200 - 1,500

113
114 TONY O’MALLEY HRHA (1913-2003)
Green Pond and Shubunkins,
Physicianstown (1994)
Oil on board, 122 x 61cm (48 x 24’’)
Signed with incised initials; also signed,
inscribed and dated 1994 verso, with
artist’s reference number 1762
Exhibited: Dublin, Taylor Galleries,
April/May 1996, Catalogue No.1, where
purchased by the present owners.
€ 8,000 - 12,000

114
115 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE (1910-1983)
Sunflowers
Oil on panel, 101.5 x 69cm (40 x 27’’)
Signed with monogram; also signed ‘Colin M’ and inscribed with title verso (The reverse with an
experimental collage and oil paint composition)
Still life was a subject that Colin Middleton turned to only occasionally throughout his career but
the small number that are known demonstrate the range of his work across four decades. A small
series of Sunflower paintings dates from the early 1960s; three of these were exhibited at the Magee
Gallery, Belfast, in 1963 although the present painting does not appear to have been one of them.
‘Girl with Sunflower’ (1952) and ‘Edge of Fields’ (1957) introduce in a more peripheral manner Middle-
ton’s interest in this particular image, which might be seen in the context of his longstanding passion
for van Gogh. He had first seen his work in London in 1928 and had then been able to visit a large
touring exhibition while it was at the Tate in December 1947. The series painted in the early 1960s
appear to have been the first occasion on which the flower became the focus of the entire work.
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a transitional period for Middleton, when his work became in
general more austere and geometric, but the Sunflowers paintings seem to sit slightly apart from
many other works of the time, with an evocative palette and an active and expressive handling of
paint.
Dickon Hall, February 2019
€ 20,000 - 30,000

115

116
116 BRIAN BOURKE (B.1936)
Sweeney, Time Hopping at St. Mullins
Mixed media on paper, sheet 50 x 65cm
(19½ x 25½’’)
Signed and inscribed with title and dated
(19)’88
€ 800 - 1,200
117 GERALD DAVIS (1938-2005)
Figures in a streetscape
Oil on board, 39 x 29.5cm (15¼ x 11½’’)
Signed
€ 400 - 600

117
118 KENNETH WEBB RWS FRSA RUA (B.1927)
Horse Fair, Ballinasloe
Oil on canvas, 65 x 100cm (25½ x 39¼’’)
Signed; inscribed with title on artist’s label verso
€ 6,000 - 10,000

118
119 JAMES HUMBERT CRAIG RHA RUA
(1877-1944)
Two Figures in a Coastal Landscape
Oil on board, 30 x 40cm (11¾ x 15¾’’)
€ 2,000 - 3,000
120 ESTELLA FRANCES SOLOMONS
HRHA (1882-1968)
The Estuary, Kerry
Oil on board, 34 x 44.5cm (13¼ x 17½’’)
Signed
Exhibited: Cork, Crawford Gallery, 1986,
E.F. Solomons Retrospective.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

119
121 CIAN MCLOUGHLIN (B. 1977)
Long Day
Oil on board, 60 x 50cm (23½ x 19¾’’)
Signed, also inscribed and signed verso
€ 2,000 - 4,000

120
Figures in a Landscape
Oil on board, 76 x 103cm (30 x 40½’’)
Signed
€ 6,000 - 10,000

121
Figures in a Coastal Landscape
Oil on board, 9.5 x 38cm (3¾ x 15’’)
Signed
€ 500 - 700
The Family
Gouache on paper, 49 x 53cm (19¼ x 20¾’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

122
125 NEVILL JOHNSON (1911-1989)
Baigneur
Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 61cm (30 x 24”)
Signed
Provenance: With the Solomon Gallery, Dublin
€ 1,500 - 2,500
126 BARBARA WARREN RHA (1925-2017)
Shore Light and Model
Oil on Canvas 49 x 39cm (19¼ x 15¼”)
Signed; inscribed with title and dated (20)’04
verso
€ 800 - 1,200

123
Three Figures
Charcoal/pastel, 22 x 33cm (8¾ x 13’’)
Signed
€ 2,000 - 3,000

124
128 JAMES ENGLISH RHA (B.1946)
Red Oil Can
Oil on canvas, 51 x 36cm (20 x 14¼’’)
Signed, also inscribed and dated 2005
verso
Artist’s studio label verso
€ 1,200 - 1,600
129 JAMES ENGLISH RHA (B.1946)
Red Onion with Oats
Oil on board 39 x 29 cm (15¼ x 11¼”)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

125
130 TREVOR GEOGHEGAN (B.1946)
Summer Woodland
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

126
131 SEAN O’SULLIVAN RHA (1906-1964)
Portrait of a Lady in a Black Lace Dress
Oil on canvas, 47 x 41cm (18½ x 16¼’’)
Signed and dated indistinctly 1941
€ 700 - 1,000
132 THOMAS BOND WALKER (1861-1933)
Haystacks
Oil on board, 34 x 26cm (13½ x 10½’’)
Signed
Note: T.B. Walker, the Belfast artist, privately
tutored Paul Henry.
€ 300 - 500

127
133 SEÁN O’SULLIVAN RHA (1906-1964)
Portrait of Mrs. R. Smyllie, in a West of Ireland Land-
scape
Oil on canvas, 76 x 64cm (30 x 25¼’’)
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1944,
Catalogue No.124.
Mrs Smyllie was married to Robert ‘Bertie’ Smyllie
who, from 1934 till 1953 was editor of The Irish Times.
€ 2,000 - 3,000
134 FRANK MURPHY RUA (1925-1979)
Hollywood Hills, Near Belfast
Watercolour, 27 x 37.5cm (10½ x 14¾’’)
Signed
€ 300 - 500

128
136 GEORGE GILLESPIE RUA (1924-1995)
Among the Connemara Bens
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
At Kylemore, Connemara
Signed
€ 2,000- 3,000

129
Horn Head and Killyahoey Strand
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
138 HENRY ROBERTSON CRAIG RHA (1916-1984)
Sunset
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000

130
139 PATRICK VINCENT DUFFY RHA (1832-1909)
Evening Time on the Dodder River
Signed
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy,
1888, Catalogue Number 112.
€ 1,200 - 1,800
140 WILLIAM SADLER II (1782-1839)
Castle by the Lake
Oil on panel, 19 x 27.5cm (7½ x 10¾’’)
€ 1,500 - 2,500

131
141 JOHN FAULKNER RHA (1835-1894)
Solitude - Croghan, Co. Mayo
Signed indistinctly (b.l); also signed and inscribed with title on artist’s label verso
€ 1,200 - 1,800

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