Adams important irish art 12th june 2019

ADAM’S
Est.1887
Auction Wednesday 12th
June 2019
IMPORTANT IRISH ART

Front cover : Lot 87 Sean Keating
Back cover : Lot 38 Mary Swanzy
Inside front : Lot 93 Roderic O’Conor
Inside back : Lot 44 G.L. Brockhurst
Opposite : Lot 70 Basil Blackshaw

Auction Wednesday 12th
June 2019 at 6.00pm
IMPORTANT IRISH ART

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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
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 12th June 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
7TH
- 12TH
JUNE
Adam’s, 26 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin D02 X665

Friday 7th
June 10.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday 8th
June 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Sunday 9th
June 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Monday 10th
June 10.00am - 5.00pm
Tuesday 11th
June 10.00am - 5.00pm
Wednesday 12th
June 10.00am - 5.00pm

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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 13th June 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 14th June 2019 at the purchaser’s risk and expense. After this time all un-
collected lots will be removed to commercial storage and additional charges will apply.
Auctioneers commission on purchases is charged at the rate of 25% (inclusive 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 11th June 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 our thanks, the assistance of Dr Brian Kennedy, Dr Roisin Kennedy, Aiden Dunne, Liz Cullinane,
Dr Eimear O’Connor, Sean Kissane, Eamon Delaney, Denise Ferran and Helena Carlyle.
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 | 12th June 2019

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1 MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978)
The Connoisseur (Grace Henry)
Oil on board, 22 x 16cm (8¾ x 6¼’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 4,000

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2 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON RHA (1878-1964)
Church of San Simeone Piccolo, Venice
Oil on board, 36 x 31cm (14¼ x 12¼’’)
Signed with initials
San Simeone Piccolo is perhaps the one church every visitor to Venice has seen, since it sits directly
across the Grand Canal from the train station.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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3 MILDRED ANNE BUTLER RWS (1858-1941)
Cattle Grazing
Watercolour, 26 x 36cm (10¼ x 14¼”)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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4 ROSE MAYNARD BARTON RWS (1856-1929)
Carrying Father’s Dinner
Watercolour, 34 x 23cm (13½ x 9’’)
Signed; inscribed with title on artist’s label verso, giving address at 15a Cromwell Place and price
£10.10.0
Also bearing trade label for C.E. Clifford, the St. James’s Gallery of Art, 30 Piccadilly, London
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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5 WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH (1854-1920)
Bog Landscape with Cottage
Watercolour, 17 x 24cm (6¾ x 9½’’)
Signed
€ 2,000 - 3,000
Bogland River Landscape
Signed and dated 1918
€ 2,000 - 3,000

13
Scot’s Pine at Dusk
Signed
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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8 JOHN HENRY CAMPBELL (1755-1828)
Muckross Abbey; Anthill Bridge; Brickeen Bridge;
and another Kerry View
A set of four, watercolour, 30 x 43cm (11¾ x 17’’)
The son of an Englishman who settled in Dublin, John Henry attended the Dublin Society’s Schools before establishing himself as a
landscape painter in Dublin. Walter Strickland notes that he sent a drawing, Moonlight to an exhibition held at Allen’s on Dame Street. The
following year he exhibited two works at Parliament House, followed by four landscapes in 1802, two in 1804 and further oils and water-
colours between 1809 and 1819. He contributed to the opening exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1826 and again in 1828.
Strickland observed amongst his watercolours are a “View of Dublin, Howth, etc., from Huband Bridge,” exhibited in 1809 and now in the
National Museum, Kildare Street; a View near Rostrevor in the National Gallery of Ireland; and a Bridge over the Dodder, Upper Rath-
mines, in the possession of Mr. J. C. Nairn, 13 Westland Row. In the British Museum are two drawings by him: The Little Sugar-Loaf, dated
1806, and Rathgar Castle, dated 1807.
Campbell maintained a well regarded position among his peers and still ranks highly for his watercolour works in particular. His daughter,
Cecilia Margaret was also a noted painter in oils and watercolours and married the artist George Nairn ARHA.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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9 MILDRED ANNE BUTLER RWS (1858-1941)
Sidecars, Phoenix Park
Pencil and watercolour, 18 x 26.5cm (7 x 10½’’)
Signed
Provenance : With J.S. Maas & Co Ltd Fine Art and Jorgensen Fine Art, labels verso
€ 6,000 - 8,000

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10 RONALD OSSORY DUNLOP RA RBA NEAC
(1894-1973)
Still Life with Flowers
Oil on canvas, 48 x 40cm (18¾ x 15¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery,
label verso
€ 800 - 1,200
11 PAUL NIETSCHE RUA (1885-1950)
Wooded Landscape with Small River
Oil on panel, 33 x 44cm (13 x 17¼’’)
Signed and dated (19)’24
€ 800 - 1,200

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12 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON, RHA (1878-1964)
Fair Day, Castlepollard
Oil on canvas, 40 x 50cm
Signed with initials
€ 5,000 - 8,000

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13 WILLIAM ASHFORD PRHA (1746-1824)
Wooded River Landscape with Peasants, Cattle, Goats and Sheep before a Ruined Castle
Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 75.5cm (23½ x 29¾’’)
Provenance: Sotheby’s London, ‘The Irish Sale’, March 2011, Lot 1.
Born in Birmingham in 1746, William Ashford came to Ireland in 1764 and settled in Dublin, having obtained an appointment
in the Ordinance Office. He married in or around 1775 and fathered two sons and a daughter. According to Strickland within
three years of his arrival in Dublin, Ashford was exhibiting with the Society of Artists on William Street. At first, he was an ama-
teur painter specializing in flower paintings and still life, but in 1772 he exhibited his first landscape at the Dublin Royal Society
of Arts, and turned professional soon after. After Thomas Roberts’ death, Ashford became the pre-eminent landscape painter
in Ireland. He was elected President of the Irish Society of Artists in 1813, and was a founding member of the Royal Hibernian
Academy, becoming its first elected President in 1823.

Strickland comments that his pictures justify the reputation he enjoyed as the foremost landscape painter of his time in
Ireland. Crookshank and Glin, in Ireland’s Painters note that Ashford painted all over Ireland with views recorded in counties
the length of the country. However the majority of his work is from the Dublin area, with views in the Phoenix Park, Leixlip and
Chapelizod recorded. Most of his works were topographical views of country seats and well-ordered parks and his principal
patrons were, therefore, the nobility and landowners. Institutions such as Society of Artists in Ireland, the Academy of Artists
in Dublin, and the Cork Society for Promoting Fine Arts exhibited his work. He is also recorded as having exhibited in England,
at the Royal Academy in London from 1775 and with the Society of Artists from 1777.
The present work, which displays strong similarities with An Idyllic Landscape (NGI 4484), painted for the Dukes of Leinster at
Carton and which is dated 1778, is also an idyllic landscape, and stylistically dates to the late 1770’s, and reflects the Claudean
influence that Ashford so readily absorbed. This classical idealization of the landscape was something that numerous Irish
painters of this period reflected in their work and arguably none did it better than Ashford. The composition is executed with
the Claudean formula, with its picturesque stone bridge, towering ruined castle dwarfing the figures and animals in the fore-
ground and with it’s hazy warm evening sky and distant landscape with further ruined buildings beyond. Some opinion has
suggested that the scene, while idyllic, may have been based on views in south county Dublin, perhaps looking south towards
Wicklow.
At the beginning of the 19th century probably between 1804 and 1806 he painted a set of landscapes in and around Mount
Merrion for Lord Fitzwilliam. The Fitzwilliam commission was the last major one he received, although he continued to paint,
and held an exhibition of his works in the board room of the Dublin Society’s premises in 1819. During his long career he
produced a large number of works, and many of them were engraved, notably in Milton’s Views.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

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14 EDWIN HAYES RHA RI ROI (1819-1904)
Off Whitby Harbour
Oil on panel, 13 x 20cm (5 x 7¾’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200
15 EDWIN HAYES RHA RI ROI (1819-1904)
Off-Loading the Catch, Scarborough Harbour
Oil on panel, 15.5 x 24.5cm ( 6 x 9½’’)
Provenance: With Cynthia O’Connor
€ 1,000 - 1,500

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16 WILLIAM SADLER II (1782-1839)
A View of Dublin from Chapelizod
Oil on panel 38 x 51cm
William Sadler was born about 1782 and practiced in Dublin as a painter, producing mainly views of neighbourhoods of the
city and it’s environs. He was known to have produced many copies of the old masters and was fond of painting dramatic
scenes, ones of conflagrations being quite numerous. He was a regular contributor to exhibitions in the city between 1809
and 1821. He later exhibited at the newly formed Royal Hibernian Academy.
The present work, A View of Dublin from Chapelizod is seen from an elevated position near the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix
Park and looks east past the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham and onwards to the city. The sweep of roadway in the foreground
is busy with a coach and four, a group of soldiers and other traffic. The topography is quite busy and arguably, licensed, with
many Dublin features evident, such as the windmill at St. James’s Gate, various church spires and Gandon’s Four Courts.
Sadler almost certainly would have been familiar with similar views by Tudor, Malton and Ashford, the latter’s view (NGI 4138)
set a little further back and perhaps a little more panoramic as a result. While Ashford’s painting displays his typical attention
to detail, Sadler creates a mood yet still paying homage to Claudean, Neo-classical ideals. Both paintings feature prominently
the Sarah Bridge with its elegant arches but Sadler’s view incorporates, in more detail, buildings on the riverside at Island-
bridge. The city too is presented as a semi-industrial one with chimney stacks billowing smoke into the hazy blue sky.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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17 MAURICE C. WILKS RUA ARHA (1910-1984)
Killary, Connemara, Co. Galway
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24’’)
Signed; also inscribed with title verso
Provenance: With The Fine Art Galleries,
T. Eaton Co. Ltd, Canada.
€ 2,000 - 3,000
18 MAURICE C. WILKS RUA ARHA (1910-1984)
Breezy Day, Bunbeg, Co. Donegal
Signed; also inscribed with title verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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19 FRANK MCKELVEY RHA RUA (1895-1974)
Unloading the Catch
Oil on canvas, 38 x 50cm (15 x 19¾’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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20 FERGUS O’RYAN RHA (1910-1989)
The Mill Pond, Autumn
Oil on board, 55 x 66cm (21½ x 26’’)
Signed; inscribed on artist’s label verso
€ 700 - 1,000
21 MARK O’NEILL (B.1963)
Broken Blue
Oil on board, 33 x 44cm (13 x 17¼’’)
Provenance: With The Frederick Gallery, Dublin,
(label verso).
€ 1,500 - 2,000

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22 CECIL MAGUIRE RHA RUA (B.1930)
The Twelve Pins
Oil on board, 59 x 75cm (23¼ x 29½’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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23 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA (1915-1980)
Mare and Foal
Oil on canvas, 63 x 85cm (24¾ x 33½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Guildhall Galleries, Chicago, label verso.
Patrick Hennessy was born in Cork in August 1915 but moved to Scotland as a young child and spent
many of his earlier years there. He received an academic training at Dundee College of Art and his
ability won him a scholarship in 1938 that allowed him to travel Europe, further expanding his artistic
talents.
Before returning to Scotland, Hennessy spent some time in Paris and it was here that he developed
his restrained surrealist style. By combining a traditional accuracy with a muted colour palette and
eerie stillness, Hennessy was able to create a manner of painting quite different from other Irish art-
ists at the time. His style allowed him to depict seemingly innocuous subjects - landscapes, still lives,
portraits and animals - in a way that enabled him to convey a much deeper and complex message.
With the outbreak of World War II, Hennessy left Scotland to return to Ireland. Despite settling in
Dublin, Hennessy spent much time in Cork, where he based many of his equine and coastal studies.
By 1940, Hennessy was exhibiting regularly at the Dublin Painters’ Society and, a year later, he had
pieces accepted to the Royal Hibernian Academy, where he was made a member in 1949. In 1956, en-
couraged by Hennessy and other artists, David Hendriks opened his gallery on St. Stephen’s Green
and this became a key exhibition platform for Hennessy. For the next twenty years, the Hendriks
Gallery handled the majority of the artist’s output, acting as an important springboard into the Irish
market. The Hendriks Gallery held Hennessy’s last exhibition in 1978, showcasing thirty-one paint-
ings.
Ill health meant that Hennessy rarely spent a full year in Ireland, preferring to winter in warmer
climates. In 1968, Hennessy moved to Morocco on a permanent basis, however he continued to
produce works for exhibition in Ireland and further afield and maintained his annual submission to
the RHA right up to the year of his death.
€ 14,000 - 18,000

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24 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA (1915-1980)
Lakes of Killarney
Oil on canvas board, 46 x 35.5cm (18 x 14’’)
Provenance: Collection of the late Eoin O’Malley and Una O’Higgins O’Malley.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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25 GEORGE CAMPBELL RHA (1917-1979)
Nearing Tetuan
Oil on board, 50 x 60cm (19¾ x 23½’’)
Signed; inscribed verso
Provenance: With Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, label verso.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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26 DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974)
New Day
Oil on board, 10 x 19.5cm (4 x 7¾’’)
Signed
€ 700 - 1,000
Dun Aengus Fort (Ancient Ruins), Aran Island
Mixed media on paper 15 x 77cm (6 x 30”)
Signed
€ 1,000 - 1,500

31
Invented Landscape
Oil on canvas, 38 x 44cm (15 x 17¼’’)
Inscribed with title verso
€ 4,000 - 6,000

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29 PAUL HENRY RHA (1877-1958)
Cottages in a Landscape (1930-1940)
Oil on panel, 34.5 x 39.5cm (13½ x 15½’’)
Signed
There is quite a lot of impasto in the clouds, the mountains and the water - to show the direction of light -
and he uses a much darker blue in his signature.
The cottages snuggle by the edge of the water along with their turf stacks, where there is also considerable
impasto.
S B Kennedy, April 2019
Numbered 1356 in S.B.Kennedy’s ongoing recording of the artist’s oeuvre
This painting represents Paul Henry at the height of his powers. After the decade of the 1920s, when his
personal life was troubled, by the early 1930s when he was free of those troubles his palette brightened, his
colours became crisper and the overall nature of his paintings grew lighter. All these things can be seen in
Cottages in a Landscape. The composition is divided in three with the upper part, as is typical of Henry, made
up of billowing cumulus clouds and a pale blue sky above a middle section composed of gently undulating
Connemara mountains, the tonal variations providing a sense of the contours and characteristics of the
landscape through the use of translucent glazes. The cottages and turf stacks are nestled just beyond the
shore, which is edged with reeds. The briskly painted lake, which occupies the foreground, reflects the sky
and it’s movement conveys a typically breezy day as the top of the water is whipped along with the wind.
Throughout, the brushwork retains the clarity that Henry learned in Paris with Whistler at the fin de siècle,
the clouds being crisply but clearly delineated, the cottages themselves set down apparently with a mini-
mum of effort, while the brushwork in the foreground is perfectly descriptive of the nature of the terrain.
We are indebted to Dr S.B. Kennedy, whose writings form the basis of this catalogue entry.
€ 60,000 - 80,000

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30 ESTELLA FRANCES SOLOMONS HRHA (1882-1968)
Portrait of the artist’s sister Sophie reclining in the studio
Oil on canvas, 55 x 68cm (22 x 27”)
Provenance: The artist’s family by descent.
Estella Solomons attended the Royal Hibernian Academy schools under Walter Osborne, and entered the
Metropolitan School of Art, where she was a pupil of William Orpen. In 1904 she spent a summer working
in the mornings drawing at Colorossi’s in Paris. In 1906 she visited the Rembrandt tercentenary exhibition
in Amsterdam, which was a significant event for her. The chiaroscuro in her early portraits, and her interest
in etching was adopted from the Dutch master, and like Rembrandt put emphasis on seeking the inner
person.
Estella Solomons attended the Royal Hibernian Academy schools under Walter Osborne, and entered the
Metropolitan School of Art, where she was a pupil of William Orpen. In 1904 she spent a summer working
in the mornings drawing at Colorossi’s in Paris. In 1906 she visited the Rembrandt tercentenary exhibition
in Amsterdam, which was a significant event for her. The chiaroscuro in her early portraits, and her interest
in etching was adopted from the Dutch master, and like Rembrandt put emphasis on seeking the inner
person.
This portrait of the artist’s sister was possibly painted in her studios at Brunswick Street in the heart of the
city, where she was ready at any moment to shelter republicans on the run, herself a member of Cumann
na mBan, where she had become versed in signaling and prepared for administering first aid to any repub-
licans that needed it. Sophie went on to become a well-known opera singer in London. The list of those
who sat for their portraits in her famous studio is a lengthy one, and includes Thomas Bodkin, Jack B Yeats,
Padraic Colum and Seamus O’ Kelly.
Seamus O’Sullivan described her studio in The Rose and Bottle; “ ...The tall press, on which were printed
those etchings of old Dublin, so prized by collectors: the curtain which veiled the ‘throne’; the boxes, with
their cushion covers, which made such pleasant seats about the fire on wintry days and nights....”
In 1958, Seamus died, and life became quiet for Estella in her remaining ten years. Although she was
crippled with arthritis, though half-bent her tall body now was, she received close friends such as Kathleen
Goodfellow to ‘The Grove’ on Morehampton Road, where tea, sandwiches and freshly baked scones were
served and discussions of art, poetry, literature and politics continued to be an important part of her life.
€ 8,000 - 12,000

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31 EVIE HONE HRHA (1894-1955)
Ducks Feeding
Monotype, 25 x 24.5cm (9¾ x 9½’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200
32 SOPHIA ROSAMUND PRAEGER
HRHA MA MBE (1867-1954)
Figural Panel
Plaster relief plaque, 31 x 36cm (12¼ x 14’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

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33 GRACE HENRY HRHA (1868-1953)
Adriatic Coast
Oil on board, 34 x 29cm (13¼ x 11½’’)
Provenance: Collection of Patrick and Antoinette Murphy
Emily Grace Mitchell was born at Kirktown St. Fergus, near Peterhead, Aberdeenshire in 1868. In 1899 she left Scotland
for the continent, visiting Holland and Belgium, studying at the Blanc Guerrins academy in Brussels. She went on to attend
the Delacluze academy in Paris. Whilst in Paris, she met Paul Henry, with the couple marrying in September 1903 in Lon-
don. They travelled to Achill Island for the first time in 1910 which was intended to be a two-week stay, though they went
on to live there until 1919. Grace developed her own style through the 1920s and 1930s, spending time in France and Italy.
She exhibited regularly at the RHA and was made an honorary member in 1949. She died in Dublin in 1953.
During her career, and for a number of years after her death, Grace Henry was largely overshadowed by her husband,
sometimes being referred to as “Mrs Paul Henry”. Her body of work was re-examined in the 1970s, which led to wider
public recognition and her inclusion in a number of exhibitions such as The Paintings of Paul and Grace Henry at the Hugh
Lane Gallery in 1991.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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34 MAINIE JELLETT (1897-1944)
Abstract Composition (c.1922)
Gouache on paper, 20 x 14cm
Exhibited: ‘Mainie Jellett 1897-1944’, Taylor
Galleries, Dublin 1989, label verso.
Provenance: Collection of Patrick and
Antoinette Murphy
€ 2000 - 3000
Gouache on paper, 21 x 10.5cm (8¼ x 4’’)
Exhibited: ‘Mainie Jellett Exhibition’, IMMA,
December 1991-March 1992.
Antoinette Murphy
€ 2000 - 3000

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www.adams.ie Important Irish Art | 27th March 2019
Gouache on paper, 15 x 20cm (6 x 7¾’’)
Antoinette Murphy
€ 2000 - 3000
Gouache on paper, 16 x 22cm (6¼ x 8¾’’)
Antoinette Murphy
€ 2000 - 3000

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38 MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978)
South of France Landscape (c.1915)
Signed
Provenance: Collection of Patrick and Antoinette Murphy, to whom gifted by the artist in 1970.
Literature: Patrick J. Murphy, ‘An Art Lover’s Guide to the French Riviera’, Artisan House 2016, full
page illustration page 174.
Mary Swanzy travelled extensively in Europe from childhood right up to her eighties. A visit to
Valle de Grasse in the south of France in 1905 to attend an informal studio after her portrait
studies in Paris changed her view on painting, allowing her to question and engage with the new
modernist shifts that heralded Cubism. It was her father’s wish that portraiture might become
her chosen profession however, landscape painting was to become the natural home for Swan-
zy’s brush. She planned to settle in Florence but the First World War forced a return to Dublin. In
1914 Swanzy exhibited for the first time in the Salon des Independents later becoming a commit-
tee member. She also regularly exhibited with the Beaux Artes. Visiting the Alpes Maritime on the
border with Italy Swanzy records her delight at her fellow countrywoman, Sarah Purser challeng-
ing Gertrude Stein, noting that Miss Stein was not accustomed to having someone stand up to
her. European landscapes with their intensity of colour informed many years of Swanzy’s lifelong
obsession with painting.
In this picture South of France Landscape Swanzy is drawing with her brush, a technique that
became central to her practice, retaining an immediacy and honesty to her modernist search for
truth. Her response to the natural world is somewhat in the manner of an impressionist painter,
she is in the moment and sensitive to her surroundings, using washes of pure colour much as a
watercolourist would do. The result is fresh and lively. Swanzy feels nature through her brush, the
surface is active, busy, taking her knowledge of divisionist colour theory, evidenced in some of
her portraits from this period.
Hard contrasts interrupt the picture plane sending the eye back and forth, questioning the
perspective that Swanzy interrogates within the rules of formal composition. In this work as
many others she selects dramatic high points to look down upon or low points which force the
viewer to look upward, suggesting a narrative between the painter and her subject. The heavy
prussian blue in the top corner creates a tension echoed in the black tree trunks and the path or
bank along the bottom of the frame.The faded terracotta pink typical of buildings in the south of
France and Italy, becomes a signature colour for Swanzy echoing classical uses of pink in Renais-
sance portraits and Mannerist painting.
By 1923 when Swanzy travels to Hawaii, before visiting Samoa and New York, she is declared in
the professions column of the SS Montcalm’s manifesto as a landscape painter; most of the wom-
en on board are recorded as wives, sisters or mothers. Safe to say she has made her decision
and landscape rather than people, nature over society is her choice by this time.
Liz Cullinane 2019
€ 20,000 - 30,000

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42
Spanish Ladies
Oil on board, 50 x 40cm (19¾ x 15¾’’)
Signed
€ 5,000 - 8,000

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40 NANO REID (1900-1981)
Where the Ships Unload
Oil on board, 76 x 61cm (30 x 24’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Peppercanister Gallery, label verso; with Dawson Gallery, label verso.
€ 5,000 - 8,000

44
41 HARRY KERNOFF RHA (1900-1974)
Theatre Costume Designs
Set of four, mixed media on paper, 23 x 17cm
(9 x 6¾’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated (19)’28
€ 1,000 - 1,500

45
43 BASIL IVAN RÁKÓCZI (1908-1979)
Flying Wooks
Watercolour, 25.5 x 35.5cm (10 x 14’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200
42 BASIL IVAN RÁKÓCZI (1908-1979)
Two Ancestors
Watercolour, 33 x 25.5cm (13 x 10’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

46
44 GERALD LESLIE BROCKHURST
(1890-1978)
Portrait of Florence Forsyth
Oil on panel, 60.7 x 47.4cm (23¾ x 18¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the sitter’s family prior to 1931; thence by descent.
A fine example of a vivacious portrait of a young woman, Florence Forsyth, holding a sprig of snowdrops, against a
stylised mountain backdrop by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst. Thought to date from the late 1920s, when Florence was
a singer in London, it was commissioned by her father.
Celebrated as a society portrait painter from the early 1920s through several decades, Brockhurst was also rec-
ognised as a printmaker of rare ability. Born in Edgebaston, Birmingham in 1890, he suffered from recurrent ear
infections as a child and wrote poorly, but was precociously good at drawing. So much so that he was accepted
into art school aged 12, first in Birmingham, then London. His self-portrait aged 15 is in the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery.
A travel scholarship brought him to France and Italy, where he was particularly impressed by the work of Piero
della Francesca, Botticelli and da Vinci. His beautiful, Renaissance-style portrait of an unnamed woman, titled
Ranunculus, (in Sheffield City Galleries), like Florence clutching a sprig of flowers, is judged an important work
in pre-war British art by Kenneth McConkey in ‘The British Portrait.’ He also met, and in 1914 married, Anaïs
Melisande Folin.
They spent the war years mostly in Ireland, and visited Connemara. Besides painting some landscapes, Brock-
hurst painted Folin as the personification of Ireland against a mountainous Connemara setting (now in the
Hunterian Gallery in Glasgow), and several portraits including those of Co Clare-born poet Francis McNamara
(like Brockhurst part of Augustus John’s social circle) and Thomas Bodkin’s fiancée Aileen Cox (now in the National
Gallery of Ireland collection, with several of Brockhurst’s Irish graphic works). Back in London from 1919, Brock-
hurst quickly became known as a printmaker and portrait painter. Although he was a slow, meticulous worker
and demanding of his sitters, he became the portraitist of choice. Subjects included Margaret, Duchess of Argyll
(now in Tate Britain), Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor and the society beauty Florence Lambert, wife of
composer Constant Lambert.
Brockhurst’s portraits are brilliantly lit. He had the instincts of a skilled Hollywood lighting-cameraman and
his ability to lend his sitters a film star gloss was often noted. In the 1930s he could demand 1000 guineas per
commission. But when his relationship with his model Kathleen ‘Dorette’ Woodward became public his marriage
ended acrimoniously and he and Woodward moved to the United States, settling in New Jersey (they married in
1947). His services were as much in demand as ever and his subjects included Merle Oberon*, Marlene Dietrich,
J. Paul Getty, several of the Rothschilds and many more. But by the time of his death, in 1978 (Woodward lived
until 1995), he was a relatively neglected figure. Since the turn of the century, however, there has been renewed
interest in his work, with several exhibitions in the US, and he is increasingly recognised as a significant 20th
century printmaker and portrait painter.
Aidan Dunne, May 2019
€ 20,000 - 40,000
* Brockhurst’s portrait of Hollywood actress, Merle Oberon sold at auction with Heritage Auctions late last year for the record price of $290,000

47

48
45 JAMES LE JEUNE RHA (1910-1983)
Portrait of Two Children
Oil on canvas, 60 x 81cm (23½ x 31¾’’)
Signed
James le Jeune was born in Canada to an Irish mother and French/English father, but lived in Brittany from the age of
two. After a period of study in Paris, he went on to Heatherley’s Academy and the Byam Shaw School in London, and
then to the Student’s League in New York. Returning to London he formally studied architecture at the London Polytech-
nic before joining the British Army to serve in Africa and Italy during World War II.
Following his service le Jeune worked as a architect but began exhibiting paintings at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters,
and in 1950 exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy. In that year he moved to Ireland, and began exhibiting at the RHA
where he was elected a full member in 1973. While living in Ireland he continued to exhibit in London, but his first solo
show was held at Victor Waddington Galleries in Dublin in 1954, and he contributed regularly to Water Colour Society of
Ireland shows. Le Jeune’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery, Abbey Theatre, National Self-Por-
trait Collection and Crawford Gallery, while many examples are found in private collection in America where he occa-
sionally painted.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

49
46 GEORGE COLLIE RHA (1904-1975)
‘This Generation’
Signed
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1953, cat no. 63.
George Collie was born in Co. Monaghan but was educated in Dublin, receiving his art training at the Dublin Metro-
politan School of Art. He exhibited two paintings at the RHA at the age of eighteen and in 1927 he won The Taylor
Prize and Scholarship with ‘Dublin Fruit and Vegetable Market’. The following year he again won The Taylor Prize
with ‘The Midday Meal’. The judges at the 1927 prize giving stated ‘....and as this work displays exceptional merit,
they recommend that the trustees make a special grant to this student to enable him to study abroad’.
Collie continued his art training in London at the Royal College of Art and in Paris at the same schools as Mary
Swanzy had attended, namely La Grande Chaumiere and Colarossi. After his return to Dublin he taught at the
Metropolitan School of Art and later set up his own teaching studios at Schoolhouse Lane off Kildare Street. He is
probably best known as a portrait painter producing some of the finest portraits of the leading figures of his day.
€ 5,000 - 8,000

50
48 ERSKINE NICOL RSA ARA (1825-1904)
Irish Crofter and his Wife in a Cottage Interior
Oil on board, 28 x 23cm (11 x 9”)
€ 2,000 - 3,000
47 WILLIAM MULREADY RA (1786-1863)
Portrait of Mrs. Sarah Legge, Wife of William
Legge of Swadlincote, Derbyshire
Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 35.5cm (18 x 14’’)
Inscribed verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500

51
49 JOHN MCBURNEY (1877-1917)
Self-portrait
Oil on canvas, 43.5 x 34cm (17 x 13.5”)
W. Rodman & Co. stamp verso
Provenance: The artist; probably bequeathed to the artist’s friend, Frederick McCann of Belfast (later annotation verso); the
Bell Gallery, Belfast, circa 1965 (stretcher rail stamped with ‘3, Alfred Street’ address); and the private collection of the late
Gilbert Telfer of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Born in Belfast, McBurney attended night classes at the Government School of Design in London while taking an apprentice-
ship as a damask designer. Awarded a scholarship to study art in South Kensington. Upon his return to Belfast, he became
involved with the Belfast Art Society, the Ulster Literary Theatre, and was President of the Ulster Arts Club. McBurney was a
close friend of Irish novelist, Forrest Reid (1875-1947). Reid described McBurney as a man of ‘extraordinary courage and per-
sonal charm ...... [whose character] comprised of a curious blend of melancholy and gaiety.’[1] Of their first meeting, Reid
recollected taking a dislike to McBurney, ‘because he told me an indecent story - a thing I detest. Long afterwards, when we
were intimate friends, I mentioned this, whereupon he immediately told me another - but that was to be expected’. [1]
McBurney’s lack of artistic prolificacy was due to poor physical strength as a result of illness. He died of tuberculosis in 1917.
Works by McBurney are held at the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
[1] F. Reid, Private Road (London: Faber and Faber, 1940)
€ 1,000 - 1,500

52
50 ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM BROCAS
RHA (1794-1868)
The Evicted Family
Another version of this scene was sold at
Sotheby’s, Slane Castle, 12 May 1980, lot
459: ‘W. Brocas / The Evicted Family / [oil
on canvas]…32 x 40.5cm’.
€ 1,500 - 2,500
51 WILLIAM SADLER II (1782-1839)
Grotto with Banditti Celebrating
Oil on panel, 22 x 32cm (8.75 x 12.5”)
€ 800 - 1,200

53
52 SAMUEL FREDERICK BROCAS
(1792-1847)
‘Howth Harbour and Ireland’s Eye’ and ‘Portmarnock Strand from Howth’
Watercolours, 30 x 43.5cm (11¾ x 17’’) and 29 x 43cm (11½ x 17’’). (2)
Born about 1792, Samuel was the second son of Henry Brocas. He attended the Dublin Society’s School and was a multi-
ple prize winner for flower painting, etching and figure drawing. Strickland notes that he practiced as a landscape painter
in Dublin both in oil and watercolour and that his works “possess considerable merit”. He was a contributor to various
Dublin exhibitions in 1804, 1809 and 1812 while he exhibited at the newly formed Royal Hibernian Academy from 1828 to
1847, the year of his death. His topographical views in the environs of Dublin are perhaps what he is best remembered for,
with many of his drawings being engraved by his brother Henry Jnr.
€ 1,500 - 2,500

54
53 WYCLIFFE EGGINTON RI RCA
(1875-1951)
A Chat by the Way
Watercolour, 36 x 53cm (14 x 20¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Grindley & Palmer,
label verso
€ 500 - 800
54 FRANK EGGINTON RCA FIAL (1908-1990)
Glassilaun Strand, Connemara
€ 600 - 1,000

55
55 ERSKINE NICOL RSA ARA (1825-1904)
Study for ‘The Apple of Her Eye’
Signed
€ 4,000 - 6,000

56
56 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957)
A Lament for Art O’Leary (1940)
A set of six illustrations, pen and ink, variously sized 14 x
18.4cm up to 20 x 16cm (5½ x 7¼’’ to 7¾ x 6¼’’)
Variously signed, signed with monogram and with mono-
gram stamp;
Together with a 2nd edition, Cuala Press. A Lament for Art
O’Leary. Translated from the Irish by Frank O’Connor, with
six illustrations by Jack. B. Yeats RHA. Reprint, 1971, for
the Irish University Press, T.M. MacGlinchey Publisher,
Robert Hogg Printer
Provenance: With Theo Waddington, Irish Art Project.
Literature: Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B.
Yeats, Irish Academic Press, 1994, Catalogue No.1474,
illustrated p.203, 204 and 205.
€ 12,000 - 18,000
Jack B. Yeats’s illustrations to A Lament for Art O’Leary are
among his most expressive and memorable drawings.
Cuala Press brought out a limited edition of 130 cop-
ies of Frank O’Connor’s translation of the 18th century
poem in 1940 for which Yeats supplied six pen and ink
illustrations. These were hand-coloured by Eileen Colum
and Kathleen Banfield of the Cuala Press in the printed
edition.
The poem is the celebrated Lament of Eileen O’Con-
nell composed in Irish for the wake of her husband Art
O’Leary who was murdered on the orders of the local
magistrate Abraham Morris in 1773. O’Leary came from
a landed Catholic family and served as a captain in the
Hussars of the Austro-Hungarian army. The couple lived
in Rathleigh House, near Macroom, Co. Cork. Eileen was
of the O’Connell family of Derrynane, Co. Kerry and an
aunt of the future politician, Daniel O’Connell. Preserved
orally for generations, her Lament is one of the last mani-
festations of the bardic poems of Gaelic Ireland.
Frank O’Connor in his introduction to the poem, writes

57
that the lament comes from ‘a world where the mind has no
yesterday and no tomorrow’. Yeats’s drawings capture the
despair and grief of Eileen as she mourns the violent death
of her young husband. She searches for his body, grieves
for him and buries his corpse. Yeats does not illustrate
specific lines but creates a parallel vision of the tale in his
epic pen and ink images. O’Connor described them as
‘noble drawings’ and they evoke the elegance and gracious-
ness of the aristocratic heritage of the protagonists as well
as the dramatic scenery of the Boggeragh mountains near
Macroom where the events take place.
The first illustration depicts O’Leary on his horse, galloping
in the mountainy landscape of north Cork. He cuts an im-
pressive figure, despite his evident youth. Holding his riding
crop aloft, he wears a military style jacket and elegant hat, a
reference to his status as an officer in the Austrian army. His
silver hilted sword is prominently displayed. Art’s swagger-
ing pose, which antagonised Morris, is mirrored by that of
his horse who holds its head and neck erect adding to the
noble demeanour of its young rider.
This image is contrasted by the next illustration of Eileen
walking upright and proudly with her two sons. The infant
is tied by a shawl to her shoulders while his brother walks
beside her. Behind them are high mountains and little
cottages. The isolation of the widow and children after
O’Leary’s death is emphasised in the lament where Eileen
notes that there ‘hangs no throng of mourners’ as disease
has decimated the people and prevented their attendance.
The third illustration shows O’Leary’s horse standing at the
gateway with its saddle empty. The bay mare’s return with-
out its mount alerted Eileen to the fate of her husband and
prompted her to search for him. One of the most impres-
sive and unusual illustrations is that of Eileen on horseback
as she goes in pursuit of O’Leary. Her locks runs wild, her
arms are astray and her face and hair become subsumed
into the surrounding sky. The rearing horse accentuates
the wildness of her emotions. The treatment of the image
encapsulates the inner grief and turmoil as expressed in
the lines :
‘On me is the grief
There’s no cure for in Munster.
Till Art O’Leary rise
This grief will never yield
That’s bruising all my heart,
Yet shut up fast in it. ‘
It also refers to the anger and vengefulness that Eileen ex-
presses towards Morris, the man responsible for O’Leary’s
death, who is referred to as ‘the bandy-legged monster, May
he rot and his children’.
In the last two illustrations Eileen is shown grieving over the
body of her husband and carrying his coffin to be buried in
the deserted cemetery of Cill na Martra. In the former, she
finds O’Leary’s badly injured body where it had fallen from
the horse at Carrignanimma. She kneels over the corpse,
blood pouring from her hands. To the right the strange
form of a standing stone, covered by O’Leary’s jacket, looks

58
like a shroud or a spirit, suggestive of the reverbera-
tions of this violent death. The sweet expression of the
woman’s face is contrasted by the contorted and ravaged
features of the cadaver below her. The horse grazing in
the background and the surrounding lush vegetation
refer to the continuity of natural life, now lost forever to
O’Leary.
In the final illustration Eileen carries her husband’s coffin
to an isolated cemetery surrounded by high mountains.
Her body is contorted under the weight of the casket, her
physique turned into a sinuous line expressive of sorrow.
The empty scene of a young woman burying her dead in
a remote landscape recalls imagery and accounts of the
Great Famine. Visually it links the end of the Gaelic nobili-
ty to the next cataclysmic event in Irish history.
The darkness of the Lament and the imagery it evokes is
mitigated by the subtle manner by which Yeats has drawn
the illustrations. Strong thick strokes of ink are counter-
acted by delicate hatching lines that convey shadow and
movement, resulting in lively fluid drawings that exude
energy and vigour. Yeats conveys a version of Eileen’s
story that works independently of the text, offering the
reader a visual sequence that is vivacious and contem-
porary.
Róisín Kennedy May 2019

59
The Hunt
Watercolour on paper, 24.5 x 16cm (9¾ x 6¼’’)
Signed
€ 5,000 - 8,000

60
58 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA
(1871-1957)
Low Water, Spring-Tide, Clifden (1906)
Oil on canvas board, 26.5 x 38cm (10½ x 15’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sold in 1906 to Oliver St. John Gogarty; Miss Brenda Gogarty, later Mrs. Desmond Williams, Tullamore; Ad-
am’s, Sale 13/12/84, Lot 120; With Hendriks Gallery Dublin; Adam’s, Sale 7/12/2005, Lot 90; Private Collection Dublin.
Exhibited: Jack B. Yeats exhibition ‘Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland’, Leinster Hall Dublin, 1st-20th October 1906,
Catalogue No.25 (this was the only oil shown); Jack B. Yeats National Loan exhibition, Dublin June-July 1945, Catalogue
No.1; Jack B. Yeats Loan Collection, Sligo town hall, August 1961, Catalogue No.26; ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition’,
National Gallery of Ireland, September-December 1971, Ulster Museum Belfast, January-February 1972, New York Cultural
Center, April-June 1972, Catalogue No.26.
Literature: ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition’, illustrated p.43 plate 26; ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonneé of the Oil
Paintings’, Hilary Pyle, vol.1, page 5, Catalogue No.4, illustrated, illustrated again vol. III, page 2, figure 4.
Yeats referred to Low Water, Spring-Tide, Clifden, in a letter to its owner Brenda Williams, as his first oil landscape.1 The
artist stayed in Connemara and sketched the scenery on several occasions in his career. This work was painted on one of
his earlier expeditions in the late summer of 1906 when he stayed in Clifden. It was probably painted on the spot unlike
his later oils which were constructed entirely in the studio. The paint is thin and evenly applied, rather in the manner of
a watercolour, a technique that Yeats was more familiar with at this time. The view is of Clifden bay with rivulets of sea
water and muddy banks left behind by the outflowing tide. The horizon is dominated by the high forms of the surrounding
mountains. A large stack of seaweed is mirrored by the conical shape of the white stone bollard on the quayside in the
extreme foreground of the composition. This creates a dramatic contrast between the man-made environment, barely
seen in the foreground, and the vagaries of the natural world that prevail in this view of Connemara. The dominant tones
are pale blue-white and deep brown but these colours contain a myriad of shades and variations indicating the richness
of the landscape and the intensity of the scenery. Through the flatness of the perspective and the rich working of the
brushstrokes which is particularly evident in the treatment of the sea-water, Yeats also stresses the physical surface of
the painting and its construction. The subject of the coast-line was to become an important theme in Yeats’s later works
where low and high tides allow for an exploration of the liminality of such spaces, belonging neither to land nor sea.
Low Water, Spring-Tide was the only oil painting included in Yeats’s one man show, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, at
Leinster Hall, Dublin in 1906. It was bought by the surgeon and writer, Oliver St. John Gogarty who went on to acquire sev-
eral other works by Yeats. Gogarty was an admirer of Connemara, acquiring Renvyle House in 1917. His daughter, Brenda,
later Mrs Desmond Williams, inherited this work along with other paintings by Yeats.
Róisín Kennedy May 2019
1. Letter of Jack B. Yeats to Mrs Desmond Williams, 19 May 1945, quoted in Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, André Deutsch 1991, I, p.5.
€ 40,000 - 60,000

61

62
59 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA
(1871-1957)
Winning the Race (c.1894-1896)
Pencil, pen, ink and colour wash, 12 x 30cm (4¾ x 11¾’’)
Stamped with monogram
Provenance: With Theo Waddington; Private Collection.
Exhibited: ‘The Life and Time of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats’, Dublin, September 2008; ‘Father and Son - Paint-
ings, Watercolours and Drawings by John Butler and Jack B. Yeats’, Waddington Gallery, London May 2009,
Catalogue No.10.
This early watercolour juxtaposes two different aspects of equestrian sport, separated by an emblem of
interlocking horseshoes, whips, crops and a correct and fixtures card. On the left two horses and their
jockeys battle it out to cross the finish line first. A mesmerised crowd stands transfixed behind them. To the
right in a more delicate scene, an elegantly attired horsewoman exchanges pleasantries with a red-coated
companion at the balustrade of a country house. The two appear to be discussing the forthcoming hunt.
The contrasting pace of each scene is humorously conveyed through the little dog which appears in both.
The model for this hound is Yeats’s much loved pet, Hooligan, who appears in many of his sketchbooks and
drawings of the 1890s and whom the artist acquired in 1894 shortly after his marriage to Cottie.
Both illustrations reveal the artist’s remarkable ability to observe and to convey through line the physical
attributes of tension and poise in people, horses and dogs. It also transmits an insightful and humorous
view of late 19th century English society and its attitude to the horse. While the work was never published,
its origins lie in Yeats’s work as a cartoonist for London based periodicals, such as Paddock Life, to which
he contributed equestrian based illustrations from 1891. Winning the Race, dated to the mid 1890s, belongs
to a period when Yeats was developing his interest in watercolour and beginning to focus on his career as
a fine artist. Its subtlety of finish and of mood distinguishes it from his black and white contributions to
graphic journals.
Róisín Kennedy
€ 4,000 - 6,000

63

64
Inspecting a Hunter (c.1894-1896)
Pencil, pen, ink and colour wash, 12 x 30cm (4¾ x 11¾’’)
Stamped with monogram
Provenance: With Theo Waddington.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

65
The Village (c.1906)
Pen and ink, 11.2 x 42cm (4½ x 16½’’)
Signed
Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Mrs Patricia McGrath, Dublin; Private collection, Dublin where purchased by
the present owner in the early 1990s.
Exhibited: Dublin, The Life and Times of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats, September 2008; London, The Waddington Gal-
leries, Father and Son - Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings by John Butler and Jack B. Yeats, May 2009, no.22.
Literature: Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats: His Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press,
Dublin, 1994, no.2017, p.284.
€ 6,000 - 8,000

66
62 EDWARD DELANEY RHA (1930-2009)
Cathedral
Bronze, 90cm high (35½’’)
Unique, circa 1961
Cathedral is a major work of sculpture by Edward Delaney RHA who is considered one of Ireland’s
most important 20th century sculptors. Delaney’s best known works include the 1967 statue of
Wolfe Tone and the Famine Family memorial in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin and the Thomas Davis
statue and angels fountain in College Green, opposite Trinity College Dublin.
These are all examples of lost-wax bronze castings, his main technique during the 1960s and early
1970s. Cathedral is in a similar vein and emulates the monumental form of these sculptures.
Influenced by Celtic art and by European modernism, Delaney’s work is in many public and private
collections. He was born in County Mayo and studied at the National College of Art and Design,
after which he studied bronze casting and sculpture in Germany. He later received many foreign
scholarships and would represent Ireland at foreign exhibitions such as the international Biennales
in Paris, Tokyo and Buenos Aires.
Delaney gained a reputation not only through Dublin galleries such as Hendriks, the Royal Hiberni-
an Academy and the Solomon, but through showing work internationally. He is also known for his
small figurative bronze work, stainless steel sculptures and his drawings and paintings on paper.
His work is in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), the Dublin City Gallery
– the Hugh Lane, OPW, AIB, Bank of Ireland, the Central Bank, the Arts Council of Ireland and the
Ulster Museum among others.
Cathedral is characteristic of Delaney’s monumental, zoomorphic style and is expressly abstract as
well as ‘rock-form’ naturalistic. He developed this dramatic style in tandem with his interest in the
standing human and animal form. Large scale works by Delaney rarely come up for sale and they
are all unique. There are no editions.
There is an image which shows Cathedral from an RTE still of 1962, with the poet Patrick Kava-
nagh, a friend of the sculptor, sitting in front of it. In 2009, his son Eamon Delaney published a
book about his father and the Irish arts scene of the 1960s and 1970s, entitled Breaking the Mould
- A Story of Art and Ireland (2009). In the book, he describes this image as a great moment in
Irish modernism -: Irish television, then in its infancy, the modern sculpture and the ‘pastoral to
modernist’ poet. He describes how, in the image - which has gone around the world as part of the
famous, Writers of Ireland poster - Kavanagh actually resembles the featured sculpture.
‘Kavanagh’s pose is particularly satisfying because Cathedral is such an abstract piece’ he writes.
‘Whatever about the public work, this really is modern, like a section of moon rock with a niche in
its side or a gouged out tree trunk. Uncannily, the whole piece resembles the poet himself: solid,
grounded and both traditional and modern, recognisable and abstract. He even shares the special
quality of Eddie’s work: brute weight rendered tenderly.’
€ 15,000 - 25,000

67

68
63 JOHN BEHAN RHA (B.1938)
Bull
Bronze, 40 x 60cm (15¾ x 23½’’)
Unique
Provenance: Bought directly from the artist.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

69
64 ANTHONY SCOTT
(20TH/21ST CENTURY)
Horse
Bronze, 58 x 40 x 20cm (22¾ x 15¾ x 7¾’’)
Signed and numbered 2/6
€ 5,000 - 8,000

70
65 MICHAEL SMITH
(20TH/21ST CENTURY)
Flower
Bronze, 68cm high (26¾’’)
€ 800 - 1,200
66 PADDY CAMPBELL (B.1942)
Ollie
Bronze, 56cm high including plinth (22’’)
Signed; edition 7/11
€ 1,500 - 2,500

71
67 CATHERINE GREENE (B.1960)
Dedalus
Bronze, 74cm high (29’’)
Signed 2009, edition 2/5
Exhibited: Cross Gallery, Dublin.
Catherine Greene is an established figurative sculptor best known for her works in bronze, but more recently she has
been working in mixed media. Her versatile output ranges from large scale public pieces to private commissions and from
large exhibition works to smaller sculptures which explore the figure in the context of the sensual and often surreal world
which they inhabit. Dedalus was part of a body of work that was first exhibited in the Cross Gallery in 2008. Major com-
missions include the equestrian memorial of the patriot Thomas Francis Meagher in Waterford, the Memorial to the much
loved comedian Dermot Morgan, Merrion Square Dublin; and the central alterpiece of the Crucifixion in the new Basilica,
Fatima, Portugal.
€ 2,000 - 4,000

72
68 RORY BRESLIN (B.1963)
Mask of the Barrow
Bronze on Kilkenny limestone, 88.5 x 41.5cm (35 x 16’’)
Artist’s proof from an edition of 3
The Mask of the Barrow is a larger than life-size adaptation of Edward Smyth’s River-God keystone depiction on the
South facade of Dublin’s Customs House.
The inherent symbolism presented in the work conjures the characteristics of the Barrow. Its visage presents an
ill-humoured and almost sullen face suggestive of a slow-flowing river. The mouth is drawn down at the corners and
exudes many small fish and water weeds which mingle with the beard. Above its broad and blunt nose, the top of
the head is adorned by the fell of a sheep, whose fore-legs hang down in front of two inverted vases, typical clas-
sical symbols of springs of water. The Barrow was renowned for its fisheries and there is the possibility that there
were many sheep walks on it’s banks. The twin vases, with the evocative water flowing from their mouths suggest
that it is in it’s lower course, after it has received the waters of the Nore.
€6,000 – 8,000

73
69 JOHN SHINNORS (B.1950)
Entry to Jerusalem
Oil on board, 92 x 73cm (36¼ x 28¾’’)
€ 8,000 - 12,000

74
70 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA (1932-2016)
Girl in Stripy Jumper
Oil on canvas, 102 x 88cm (40 x 34½’’)
Provenance: The artist’s family, by descent.
Basil Blackshaw was born in Glengormley in Co. Antrim in 1932. He attended Belfast College of Art and
was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris by the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the
Arts. With his home and studio by Lough Neagh in Co Antrim there was no shortage of subject matter on
his doorstep leading him to the exploration of the landscapes, farm buildings, dogs and horses that he
shared his local environment with.
While he was initially acclaimed for his mastery of traditional approaches to painting, he continued to
develop as an artist, and was recognized for his very loose application of paint and a distinctive and subtle
use of colour. His paintings of horse racing, cock fighting and boxing made him particularly popular, but
Blackshaw was also a talented portrait painter, as the present work attests.
A major retrospective was organized by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1995 and this show
travelled throughout Ireland and a number of galleries in the United States. The Ulster Museum followed
this up with a major exhibition in 2002, while the Fenton Gallery in Cork exhibited fifteen new paintings
in 2005. The following year Blackshaw’s work was exhibited in Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais. Basil
Blackshaw died in May 2016.
€ 15,000 - 20,000

75

76
72 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA (1932 - 2016)
Drumaness Mill
Oil on canvas, 29.5 x 23.5cm (11½ x 9¼)
Basil Blackshaw studio label signed by artist’s
daughter verso
Provenance: The artist’s studio and thence by
descent; Adam’s Important Irish Art, March 29th
2017, lot no. 134
€ 1,000 - 1,500
71 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA (1932-2016)
On Colin Mountain (2)
Watercolour, 21 x 29cm (8¼ x 11½’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed verso
Provenance: The artist’s family, by descent.
€ 800 - 1,200

77
73 DONALD TESKEY RHA (B.1956)
The East Pier, Howth
Oil on handmade paper, 58 x 77cm (22¾ x 30¼’’)
€ 8,000 - 12,000

78
74 PETER COLLIS RHA (1929-2012)
Still Life with Yellow Dish
Oil on canvas, 33 x 40.5cm (13 x 16’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500
75 FR. JACK P. HANLON (1913-1968)
Cityscape
Watercolour, 34 x 50cm
€ 800 - 1,200

79
76 GERARD DILLON (1916-1971)
Asian Girl with Chrysanthemums
Oil on canvas, 33 x 24cm (13 x 9½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Peppercanister Gallery, label verso.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

80
77 KENNETH WEBB RWS FRSA RUA
(B.1927)
George Bernard Shaw’s Birthplace at
33 Synge St. Dublin
Oil on canvas, 40 x 60cm (15¾ x 23½’’)
Signed
€ 1,000 - 1,500
78 KENNETH WEBB RWS FRSA RUA
(B.1927)
A View towards Sorrento Terrace and
Dalkey Island from Killiney, Dublin
Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 61.5cm (16 x 24¼’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

81
The Performance
Oil on board, 39 x 49cm (15¼ x 19¼’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 4,000

82
80 ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM HEALY (FL.1769-1778)
Portrait of Mrs Gardiner, in a romantic landscape
Grisaille pastel, 61.5 x 44.5cm
In intertwined giltwood ribbon frame surmounted by elaborate bow
William Healy was the younger brother of renowned 18th Century portraitist Robert
Healy who has been hailed as the most gifted Irish artist to have work in the medium
of pastel.
Both brothers trained in the Dublin Society’s Drawing Schools and worked at a time
when Dublin was celebrated as the centre of drawing and portraiture in grisaille.
Following the untimely death of his brother, William assumed the position of leading
pastellist in Dublin. William produced a number of copies after his late brother’s work,
many of which he exhibited at the Society of Artists in Dublin in 1769.
This portrait has been identified as Mrs Gardiner, wife of the Right Hon. Charles Gar-
diner and mother of Luke Gardiner, Viscount Mountjoy and Lady Clancarty (née Anne
Gardiner). Robert Healy also carried out a full-length portrait of Lady Clancarty which
was subsequently copied by William.
In this portrait Mrs Gardiner is captured as a woman in mourning, standing in natural-
istic surrounding with her hand placed upon a pedestal supporting a memorial urn.
This distinctive gilt-wood frame is found on a number of pastels by Healy.
See Exhibiting Art in Georgian Ireland, catalogue number 38 (2018) for an identical
example.
€ 20,000 - 30,000

83

84
81 WILLIAM MAGRATH (1838-1918)
Peasant Girl Carrying Ewers on a Pathway
Oil on panel, 15 x 11cm (6 x 4.25”)
Signed
Provenance: [William J.] Fischer’s Auction
Rooms, 54 East 13th St., New York, circa 1960
(label verso).
€ 1,000 - 1,500
82 GEORGE BARRET RA (1730-1884)
Horses, Sheep and a Cow in Landscape
Oil on panel, 13.5 x 16.75cm (5.25 x 6.5”)
Inscribed ‘Landscape by Barrett (sic), Cattle by
Gilpin’ in ink verso
Enclosed in a carved and gilded Louis XIV oak
frame
€ 1,500 - 2,500
Few works on this scale by Barret are recorded.
However, discussing prices with a client, Barret
wrote in 1775: ‘I have painted pictures from 10ft
down to 5ins.’[1]
1] A. Laing, Clerics and Connoisseurs: An Irish Art Collection Through Three
Centuries, p. 102 (London: English Heritage, 2001)

85
83 JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR
(1792-1841)
Wooded Landscape with a Figure beside a Cascade
Signed with initials and dated 1830
Provenance: Christie’s, Charles Horsley’s sale, 20 November 1880, lot 82, sold for 4 guineas to Mr.
Homes (stock number verso); Christie’s, the Irish Sale, 10 May 2007, lot 37 (stock number verso).
€ 4,000 - 6,000

86
86 JOHN BUTLER YEATS RHA
(1839-1922)
Head of a Woman
Charcoal, 48 x 39cm (19 x 15¼’’)
Provenance: Miss M Weir, thence by descent;
With Peter Francis Antiques, Comber; Sale,
Whytes, Nov 2006, lot 81
€ 4,000 - 6,000
84 WILLIAM PENGREE SHERLOCK
(FL.1801-1850)
Classical Landscape with Figures by a Lake
Oil on panel, 22.5 x 17.5cm (8.75 x 6.75”)
Signed on rock face, middle right; also signed
and inscribed with address verso
€ 700 - 1,000
William Pengree Sherlock, painter and
draughtsman, was the son of Dublin born
miniaturist, prize fighter, and fencing mas-
ter, William Sherlock (fl.1759-1806). Pengree
Sherlock was a painter of topographical scenes,
exhibiting nine times at the Royal Academy be-
tween the years 1801 and 1810, and a success-
ful imitator of the works of Welsh landscape
painter, Richard Wilson (1713-1782). Works by
Pengree Sherlock are held at the Usher Gallery,
Lincoln, England.
85 GEORGINA MOUTRAY KYLE RUA
(1865-1950)
The Mourne Mountains
Oil on canvasboard, 32 x 39.5cm (12½ x 15½”)
Provenance: These rooms, Important Irish Art
auction, 25 September 1996, Catalogue No.140,
where purchased by present owner
€ 500 - 800

87

88
87 SEÁN KEATING PRHA (1889-1977)
Homeward Bound
Oil on board, 58.5 x 85cm (23 x 33½’’)
Signed; also signed twice verso, in Irish and English
Provenance: With Kenny’s, Galway c.1989, where purchased by the present owners.
Irish artist Seán Keating first visited the Aran Islands with Harry Clarke (1889-1931) in 1912. From
then on the place, its people, and their traditions, inspired Keating’s work, and his artistic identity.
He sketched and painted while on the islands and, from an early stage in his career, he also took
photographs to help him to compose paintings when back in Dublin. He added a cine camera to
his tool kit in the early 1930s. Keating visited the islands on a more or less yearly basis from 1912
until 1965, the year that his wife, May (née Walsh) died. Always fascinated by the vagaries of the
Irish climate, he constantly jotted down notes about the position of the sun, the direction and
force of the wind, the time of day, the colour of the water, the sky and the clouds, and any other de-
tails that he thought relevant. Keating’s images of the Aran Island people were in constant demand
from buyers in Ireland, England and America, so after he stopped going to Aran, he began to use
photographs and cine footage, as well as previous paintings, his copious notes, and his recollection
of the place, to supply the market for his work.
In the late 1960s, while in his late 70s, Keating began to exhibit with the Kenny Gallery in Galway.
He had several one person exhibitions there, one of which was opened by Irish broadcaster, Gay
Byrne, in 1973, following a televised birthday tribute to the artist on the Late Late Show in Decem-
ber, 1972. The exhibitions were a great success, and the Kenny Gallery kept a stock of the artist’s
work available to buyers, an example of which is Homeward Bound.
Showing six Aran Island men in their traditional hand-made currachs, Homeward Bound is a late
work by the artist, which well-illustrates his artistic focus on the traditions of the people of Aran,
and on the weather conditions. Post-dating 1965, the painting was created using his vast collec-
tion of photographs, sketches, drawings, and notes. Yet, it is as if the artist is actually standing on
the shore line, amid the rolling waves and calm sky, entreating his viewers to listen to the excited
hollers of the men rising above the heaving ocean. The boats are empty of fishing accoutrements,
and so we seem to be watching a traditional currach race rather than a group heading home from
a working day at sea.
Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA
Research Associate
Humanities Institute, UCD.
May 2019
€ 60,000 - 80,000

89

90
88 WILLIAM JOHN LEECH RHA ROI
(1881-1968)
Girl in a Garden
Oil on canvas, 60 x 40cm (23½ x 15¾’’)
Exhibited: Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, ‘William John Leech: An Irish Painter Abroad’,
October/December 1996, Catalogue No.48, full page illustration page 193.
Provenance: Collection of Patrick and Antoinette Murphy.
Leech has painted an uncharacteristically low horizon line and a large expanse of sky as the
little girl poses in the open air, against what appears to be a hay trough with an open land-
scape behind. This is possibly Suzanne, posing for Leech, now a few years older than when
he painted her portrait (NGI cat.47).
Photographs show that, with May and Suzanne, Leech visited his brother Cecil’s small stud
farm at Ham Green in Kent in 1924, before Suzanne’s long hair was cut. The countryside
suggests the rich pastures of Kent with sunlight flooding into the painting, alighting on her
blonde hair, on the front of her white pinny and on the expanse of the yellowy-green grass
of the field. There is a hint of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Twas Brillig’ (NGI cat.22), painted
nearly fifteen years previously, but Leech has used a drier, textured style with overpainting
and an emphasis on detail in the blonde tendrils of hair which fall on her young face. Here,
he has focussed on a single figure, set into a landscape, as he did with Elizabeth in ‘A Covent
Garden’ (NGI cat.37), rather than on a landscape in which children mingle and are absorbed.
We acknowledge Dr Denise Ferran and the National Gallery of Ireland ‘William John Leech: An Irish Painter
Abroad’ for the above catalogue entry.
€ 8,000 - 12,000

91

92
89 WILLIAM JOHN LEECH RHA ROI
(1881-1968)
Portrait of James (Jim) Botterell (1926)
Signed
Provenance: From Mrs. Jim Botterell to Pyms Gallery, London; Whyte’s 2007, where
purchased by current owner.
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy 1926, Catalogue No.11, entitled ‘Jim’.
Literature: Denise Ferran, ‘William John Leech: An Irish Painter Abroad’, National
Gallery of Ireland, Dublin 1996, Figure 42, illustrated page 71.
€ 6,000 - 8,000

93
90 RODERIC O’CONOR (1860-1940)
Nu Allongé et Accoudé
Charcoal, 45 x 65cm (17¾ x 25½’’)
Provenance: Dr. Robelet, Neuil Sur Layon; Thierry & Lannon, Brest, Sale 14/10/09, Lot No.334.
€ 2,000 - 3,000
Nu Allongé, Assoupi
Charcoal, 25.5 x 33cm (10 x 13’’)
Provenance: Dr. Robelet, Neuil Sur Layon; Thierry & Lannon, Brest, Sale 14/10/09, Lot No.395.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

94
Landscape with Red Haystacks (1932)
Exhibited: Possibly Copenhagen, Winkel and Magnussen, Gauguin Og Hans Venner (Gauguin and His Friends), 1956,
(104) as Landskab med Kornstakke
Provenance Mr. J. P Reihill, Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin; His sale, these rooms, October 1st 2014, Lot 98; Private
Collection, Dublin
Literature Roderic O’Conor, 1860-1940, Jonathan Benington, Dublin,1992, Cat. No. 302, p.225
In 1956, sixteen years after his death in France, a painting by O’Conor was included in an exhibition titled ‘’Gauguin and His Friends’’
which was assembled in Copenhagen by the auction house, Winkel and Magnussen. The similarity of subject matter between
O’Conor’s painting in that exhibition, Landscape with Cornstack, and Landscape with Red Haystacks suggests a possible link between
them, but this has not been positively verified.
Of all the rural sites made famous by French artists in the mid-nineteenth century, the most significant was the small village of Bar-
bizon, situated on the edge of the great forest of Fontainebleau and a short journey from Paris. Barbizon had attracted landscape
artists such as Millet, Rousseau, Daubigny, Dupré and Corot, who were drawn by the beauty of the forest and the dappled light which
filtered through the trees. In 1932, Roderic O’Conor, at the age of seventy-two, accompanied by his model and close companion,
Renée Honta, left Paris temporarily to paint in the country, choosing to stay at Chailly-en-Bière rather than at Barbizon, which had
become a popular tourist destination.
Apart from a visit to Cassis in the summer of 1913, most of O’Conor’s painting activity in Paris had been centered on studio-based
subject matter and he probably felt the need to return to landscape themes and a closer connection to nature. Chailly was just three
kilometres from Barbizon and provided a more tranquil and suitable location for his needs at that time. There was also an artists’ inn
at Chailly, called L’Auberge du Cheval Blanc, whose proprietor had developed a reputation for being sympathetic to the activities of
visiting artists who came to paint in the Barbizon environment. The dining room at the inn was filled with paintings donated by artists
in lieu of payment for their accommodation. Some of O’Conor’s friends who were in contact with him queried his decision to paint
in the Barbizon area at Chailly, claiming that it had lost its relevance as an artists’ colony and that the area had become a magnet
for ill-informed tourists. Even his friend Joseph Milner-Kite, who had studied with him in Antwerp, suggested that he might be back
on the bus to Paris within a few days.(1) Chailly’s location on the fertile plain of Bière and its distinctive flat landscape provided the
background for several O’Conor paintings in which haystacks became the primary subject matter. He may have been influenced by
Monet’s 1890-91 grainstack series painted in Normandy at Giverny. Whereas Monet was exploring the effects of light and seasonal
change upon a variety of grainstacks, O’Conor appears to have only been interested in their shapes, the colors and their relationship
to the surrounding landscape.
O’Conor was in the last decade of his life when he painted Landscape with Red Haystacks. The scene is lightly painted with well diluted
oil pigment, quickly sketched as if to capture the immediacy of the moment. The tracks in the field lead the viewer into the compo-
sition and hint at recent activity, probably associated with building the haystacks, which are set against a belt of dark green trees
running across the picture plane in the center of the painting. The blue-gray pigment which O’Conor introduced into the upper right
corner creates a darkened sky and suggests an impending storm. However, judging from the number and range of his Chailly paint-
ings, several of which include well worked views of its 12th century Eglise de Saint Paul, it is evident that O’Conor’s time in the area
was well spent and he must have returned to Paris in a much refreshed mood as a direct result.
Dr. Roy Johnston
(1) The letter was found in 1982 in a private collection in Nueil-sur-Layon in the west of France where O’Conor died on 18 March, 1940.
€ 20,000 - 30,000

95

96
94 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA (1916-2012)
Cúchulainn VIII, 1999
Aubusson wool tapestry, 182 x 182 (71¾ x 71¾’’)
Signed, numbered 8/9 and titled verso
Provenance: The Shelbourne Hotel Collection.
Louis le Brocquy, one of the most celebrated Irish artists of the 20th century, was initially destined
for a career in the family business, the Greenmount Oil Company in Harold’s Cross, Dublin. Hence
he studied chemistry, not art. But he was more fascinated by painting than petrochemicals and his
mother, actively involved in literary life, suggested that he and his fiancée elope to London, where
he could see if his artistic aspirations led anywhere. He proved to be a natural, technically adept and
quick to appreciate emerging developments. He always maintained that he learned all he knew by
studying paintings in the great galleries of Europe and, once back in Ireland in the early 1940s, soon
became an important figure in the emerging modernist scene in Irish art.
Active as a designer as well as a painter, he was immediately receptive when The Edinburgh Tapestry
Weavers approached him in 1948 and asked him if he would be interested in designing a tapestry.
He felt the invitation matched perfectly with his interest in the emotional expressiveness of colour.
When he was asked to produce more tapestries, rather than letting skilled weavers work from a
painted cartoon, he created detailed, colour-coded, linear templates or patterns. This made the tap-
estry a unique work rather than a copy of an original, and recalled pre-Renaissance techniques, as
espoused by the great Jean Lurçat, who le Brocquy regarded as a mentor. He knew the ideal tapestry
weavers to realise these intricate patterns were Atelier Tabard at Aubusson. Thus began a long and
fruitful collaboration with Aubusson.
When le Brocquy made his iconic brush and ink drawings for Thomas Kinsella’s The Táin in 1969, he
quickly realised that they were ideal for use in tapestry. Following on from the drawings he initially
worked with black-and-white in works realised by Atelier René Duché at Aubusson. Then he recalled
his colour explorations of the 1940s and set about designing Táin tapestries in colour. He visualised
Cuchulainn’s Táin, or raiding party, as band of rugged individualists, and arranged a grid of heads
against a radiant background in a virtuoso arrangement of primary and secondary colours. These
superb tapestries rank among his finest achievements.
Aiden Dunne, May 2019
€ 30,000 - 50,000

97

98
95 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA (1916-2012)
Mycenean Gold Mask (1974)
Aquatint on wove paper, 41 x 41cm (16 x 16’’)
Signed and numbered 31/75
Exhibited: Dublin, Dawson Gallery, ‘Seven Colour Etchings’, October 1974.
€ 800 - 1,200
96 NO LOT

99
97 JOHN DOHERTY (B.1949)
19 O’Connell Street
Acrylic on paper, 25 x 37cm (9¾ x 14½’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1981
Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, label verso.
€ 2,500 - 3,500

100
‘Radiation’ and ‘Composition’
A pair, oil on card, 15 x 19.4cm (6 x 7½’’)
Signed; one inscribed verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500
‘Cubes within a Cube’ and ‘Floating Cubes’
A pair, oil on card, 19.4 x 15cm (7½ x 6’’)
Signed; inscribed verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500
‘Co-Related Spirals’ and ‘Composition’
A pair, oil on card, 19.4 x 15cm (7½ x 6’’)
Signed; one inscribed verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500

101
101 FELIM EGAN (B.1952)
Red Sound
Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 120cm (47¼ x
47¼’’)
Dated 1992 on label
Provenance: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin label verso
€ 4,000 - 6,000

102
102 FELIM EGAN (B.1952)
Blue Signs
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 75 x 75cm
(29½ x 29½’’)
Signed and dated (20)’05 verso
Provenance: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin label verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000

103
103 MICHAEL FARRELL (1940-2000)
Sandycove Series No. Two
Acrylic on canvas, 172 x 172cm diagonal (67¾’’)
Born in Kells, Co. Meath, Michael Farrell studied graphic design in London at St. Martin’s School of Art. Early in his career he painted
backgrounds in Ardmore Studios, a television and film facility near Bray, alongside artist Robert Ballagh. Farrell’s graphic training is
evident in his early work, and the striking motifs of this period recur throughout his career.
Visits to London, Paris and New York in the mid-1960s resulted in an innovative body of work, related to Celtic themes. His diverse
range evolves from an objective, abstract formalism, exemplified in the Celtic and Pressé works, to a more subjective figurative ex-
pression evidenced in the Pressé Politique and Miss O’Murphy/Madonna Irlanda series. As an artist he was concerned with issues
surrounding Irish identity, culture, history and politics.
Farrell became disillusioned with Ireland and moved to Paris in 1971, after a sensational public denouncement of Irish politics. He
received a number of awards internationally, and was elected a member of Aosdána in 1987. His work is included in important col-
lections both in Ireland and abroad, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane Gallery; the Ulster
Museum; the City Museum of Manchester Art Gallery, and the Pompidou Centre and Musée d’Art Modern in Paris.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

104
104 CHARLES BRADY HRHA (1926-1997)
Red Iron (1968)
Oil on paper, 40.6 x 30.5cm (16 x 12’’)
Inscribed on artist’s label verso
€ 1,500 - 2,500
105 CECIL KING (1921-1986)
Untitled
Oil on paper, 28 x 23cm (11 x 9’’)
Signed and dated 1985/86 on artist’s label
Provenance: With Oliver Dowling Gallery,
label verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500

105
106 BRIAN BOURKE HRHA (B.1936)
Spring, Knockalough Bog Cuts (c.1982)
Oil on canvas, 96 x 82cm (37¾ x 32¼’’)
Brian Bourke was born in 1936 in Dublin and studied at the National College of Art and Design and
later at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. He held his first one-man show in Dublin in 1964.
The following year he won an Arts Council prize for portraiture, and represented Ireland in both
the Biennale de Paris and the Lugano Exhibition of Graphics. He won the Munster and Leinster Bank
competition in 1966, and first prize in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art competition in 1967. He was
included in The Delighted Eye, the Hibernian Landscape and the Cork Rosc exhibitions in 1980. In 1985,
he was named Sunday Independent Artist of the Year, and received the O’Malley Award from the
Irish-American Cultural Institute in 1993.
His work is included in public and private collections both in Ireland and abroad. He was elected a
member of Aosdána and is an Honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.
He lives in Co. Galway and is represented by Taylor Galleries in Dublin.
€ 3,000 - 5,000

106
107 NEVILL JOHNSON (1911-1999)
Inevitable Kitchen Figure
Mixed media on board, 44 x 40cm (17¼ x 15¾’’)
Provenance: With Solomon Gallery, Dublin
label verso
€ 800 - 1,200
108 BARBARA WARREN RHA
(B.1925-2017)
Spain
Mixed media on paper, 71 x 52cm (28 x 20½’’)
Royal Dublin Society National Art Competition
label
€ 400 - 600

107
109 BRIAN BOURKE (B.1936)
Portrait of a Seated Girl
Unframed
€ 2,000 - 3,000

108
110 WILLIAM SCOTT CBE RA (1913-1989)
Untitled (Archive No.01712)
Gouache on paper, 33 x 35cm (13 x 13¾’’)
Exhibited: ‘William Scott: Paintings and Drawings’, Irish Museum of Modern Art, July - November 1998.
This untitled gouache by William Scott has consistently been dated to the early 1960s but no more precisely.
Scott’s work was always in a state of development – he did not stand still as an artist – but even so the early
1960s saw a significant shift. Following a phase of making densely packed and highly textured still life paintings,
he began through “a process of elimination”, as he put it looking back in 1975, to move towards abstraction. Part
of this process was his acceptance of “larger areas of undisturbed colour.”
At one point that colour was predominantly blue, a colour he always liked. Made following a yearlong residency
in Berlin, his mid-1960s series of Berlin Blues paintings is exclusively blue on white, and abstract. Not that he
felt downcast in Berlin, quite the opposite. The blues in question came from was a pigment he discovered while
there and immediately loved, called ‘Pariserblau’ and manufactured in Dusseldorf.
This untitled gouache, with its high horizon line and great sense of space and light, is exceptionally spare and
exemplifies Scott’s gift for composition. The partial ellipse cut out of the dark rectangle to the left is dynamically
balanced by the smaller dark ellipse on the right. The difference in size also enhances a feeling of depth. And, as
he noted, he feels free to leave the surfaces undisturbed.
His desire to clear the decks, so to speak, without being consciously aware of it, is also evident in watercolours
(sometimes with touches of gouache) painted from about 1959. Again he uses a very simple vocabulary of
colour and form and, given the nature of watercolour, he contrives it so that the forms seem in the process of
dissolution, while retaining a quiet, durable presence.
Scott is exceptional among leading 20th century painters in making still life, and still life of a workaday, humble
sort, his primary subject, with the human figure, landscape and pure abstraction lagging a little behind. The
other great painter of still life who springs immediately to mind is Giorgio Morandi. The two artists are quite
different but they shared an ability to see, and celebrate, monumental character in the mundane objects and
rituals of domestic routine.
Scott was born in Greenock, Scotland in 1913. His mother was Scottish and his father, a sign painter and deco-
rator, was from Enniskillen. Though the family moved to Enniskillen when Scott was a child, William senior was
killed when he tried to rescue someone in a burning building. The young Scott was greatly encouraged by his
art teacher Kathleen Bridle, and went on to study at the Royal Academy Schools in London, marrying a fellow
student, Hilda Mary Lucas.
Over many years, Scott carefully devised and refined an elegant pictorial language of simplified realism that
earned him an international reputation and numerous honours and accolades. He acknowledged the influence
of Egyptian and Japanese art on his style. While he wanted the freedom to compose paintings as he wished, and
on occasion embraced pure abstraction, his work generally retained a connection to elements of still life, the
figure or the landscape.
Aiden Dunne, May 2019
€ 15,000 - 25,000

109

110
111 WILLIAM SCOTT CBE RA
(1913-1989)
Composition, 1965
Watercolour on paper, 43 x 53.4cm (17 x 21’’)
Signed
Provenance: Collection of Finbarr and Moyra
O’Donovan.
€ 10,000 - 15,000

111

112
113 PATRICK HICKEY HRHA (1927-1998)
Gosshawk and Crows
Lithograph, 50.5 x 67cm (19¾ x 26¼’’)
Signed, inscribed, dated Summer 1987 and
numbered 4/35
€ 500 - 700
Irish Landscape, January
Lithograph, 53 x 34cm (20¾ x 13½’’)
Signed, inscribed and numbered 18/20
€ 300 - 400

113
East Coast Forest
Carbonundrum print, 52.4 x 60.7cm (20¾ x 24’’)
Signed, inscribed, dated ‘71 and numbered 7/20
€ 400 - 600
Iris and Inchworm
Screenprint, 75.7 x 56.5cm (29½ x 22¼’’)
Signed, inscribed, dated ‘88 and numbered 5/35
€ 400 - 600

114
Toledo
Oil on board, 71 x 96.5cm (28 x 38’’)
Signed
Born in County Wicklow, George Campbell spent the latter part of his childhood in Northern
Ireland. Thus, when he fully committed to painting at the age of twenty-four, it was to the artistic
community of Belfast that he turned for guidance. Believing the art schools to be too rigid, Camp-
bell learned his skills from fellow artists, developing a style imbued with the tastes of the North.
Moving to Dublin in the mid-1940s, Campbell established himself near the port where he came
into contact with the Spanish sailors as they moved in and out of the city. From these encounters,
Campbell’s fascination with Spain took root and it was only a matter of time before he travelled to
the country.
In 1951, accompanied by his wife and artist Gerard Dillon, Campbell worked his way down through
Spain. Reaching the Spanish coast in the south, Campbell fell in love with Málaga and incorporated
himself into the lifestyle and culture of the town. Over the next twenty years, Campbell spent his
winters in Spain, escaping the cold and damp of the Irish climate. He fell in love with the colours,
the music and the characters, filling his sketchbooks with the vibrancy of Spanish life. On returning
to Ireland each spring, Campbell would turn these sketches into fully matured oil paintings, selling
them through galleries in Dublin and London.
Venturing away from the coast, Campbell made several paintings of Toledo. Located in central
Spain, just south of Madrid, Toledo is imbued with history and cultural significance. For an artist
who was drawn to the historical and ancient sites of Ireland, Toledo represented a Spanish equiv-
alent. Surrounded on three sides by a river, the city dates back to Roman rule and was once the
capital of the Spanish Empire. In the 16th century, Toledo was home to El Greco, an artist whose
work was much admired by Campbell and this must have resonated with him as he painted his
cityscapes.
Unlike many of his Spanish works which are bursting with bright, warm colours, this view of Toledo
offers a more sombre depiction, showing the city in the quiet hours of the night. Emerging from
the moody purple of the surrounding land and sky, the whitewashed walls of Toledo shine in the
moonlight. The buildings are proffered forth like a ghost town on the edge of two worlds, the
blurred margins slipping silently back into the night. In 1971, Campbell spoke to BBC Northern
Ireland and referred to “Spain of the ethereal light and the mysterious nights… its rugged and lace
shapes and textures hard wrought by thousands of years.” In ‘Toledo’, we see Campbell’s words
transformed into a physical representation.
Whilst Campbell lived between Ireland and Spain, it was to Spain that his heart belonged and his
connection with the country was officially recognised when, in 1978, he was made a Commander
of the Order of Merito Civile. Sadly, he died the following year but Campbell’s love affair with both
Ireland and Spain is beautifully continued through the works that he left behind.
Helena Carlyle, May 2019
€ 8,000 - 12,000

115

116
117 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE
(1910-1983)
Untitled
Pen and ink on paper, 17 x 24cm (6¾ x 9½’’)
Signed with monogram
€ 400 - 600
118 GEORGE CAMPBELL RHA
(1917-1979)
The Reader
Pastel on paper, 27 x 21cm (10½ x 8¼’’)
Signed
€ 400 - 600

117
119 MARTIN MOONEY (B.1960)
Classical Structures
Oil on canvas, 146 x 113cm (57½ x 44½’’)
Signed and dated 89/90 verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000

118
120 HOWARD HELMICK (1845 - 1907)
‘The Dispensary Doctor- West Of Ireland’
Oil on canvas, 57 x 80cm (22.4 x 31.4”)
Possibly exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1883, no.1488
Howard Helmick was born in Ohio, in 1845 and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He later moved
to Paris and trained alongside Henry Bacon at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, devoting himself to genre painting. He
moved to London in 1872 and from there regularly visited Ireland. Best known for his Irish genre studies, and paintings of
Irish households, Helmick was the foremost artist among a small set of painters who focused on rural Irish culture, and
was hailed by contemporary critics as ‘an American Wilkie’.
Throughout his time in London, he regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal
Society of Painters-Etchers and Engravers, the Society of British Artists, and the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham. He
also exhibited work at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Walker Art Gallery in Liver-
pool and Manchester City Art Gallery. He was elected a member of Society of British Artists in 1879, and the Royal Society
of Painters-Etchers and Engravers in 1881. He died at home, in Georgetown, Washington D.C., in 1907.
€ 10,000 - 15,000

119

120
“Jack B. Yeats: A catalogue Raisonné of the oil
paintings” by Hilary Pyle
London: André Deutsch, 1992.
Three volumes, 1856pp with 1822 illustrations,
111 in colour.
Cloth in a slipcase fine unopened condition.
Definitive catalogue raisonné of Ireland’s great-
est painter, bringing together every known oil
painting by Yeats, providing further documen-
tary illustrations where appropriate and citing
all relevant sources and influences. No. 887
from an edition limited to 1500, a must have for
anyone interested in the history of Irish art and
work of Jack B. Yeats. Mint unopened condition.
€ 300 - 500
The Valley Wood, Dublin (c.1900)
Watercolour on card, 13 x 9cm (5 x 3½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Dawson Gallery Dublin,
label verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500

121
124 BEA ORPEN HRHA (1913-1980)
A Village Scene with Figure
Oil on board, 28 x 25cm (11 x 9¾’’)
Signed
€ 500 - 800
123 EDITH OE SOMERVILLE (1858-1949)
Figures on Horseback - Probably Followers of
the Carbery Hunt
Pencil, 22 x 17cm (8¾ x 6¾’’)
Provenance: With The Neptune Gallery, Dublin,
where purchased.
€ 300 - 400

122
Incoming Tide
Oil on board, 26 x 34cm (10¼ x 13¼’’)
€ 800 - 1,200
Morning Mist
Oil on board, 29 x 44cm (11½ x 17¼’’)
Signed
€ 1,600 - 2,000

123
Old Town Steps
Oil on board, 21 x 32cm (8¼ x 12½’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
Old Town Steps
Oil on board, 35 x 21cm (13¾ x 8¼’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000

124
129 NEIL SHAWCROSS RHA RUA
(B.1940)
Downpatrick Jelly
Watercolour on paper, 44 x 34cm (17¼ x 13½’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated June 1983
€ 500 - 700
130 MARKEY ROBINSON (1918-1999)
Figure in a Landscape
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

125
131 RICHARD KINGSTON RHA RUA (1922-2003)
Killiney Bay
Oil on board, 61 x 122cm (24 x 48’’)
Signed
€ 2,000 - 3,000

126
133 ELIZABETH RIVERS RHA (1903-1964)
‘The Bar Scene’, Dublin 1956
Oil on board, 39 x 29cm (15¼ x 11½”)
Signed with initials; also signed twice and inscribed with
title on artist’s label verso
€ 1,000 - 2,000
Portrait of yhe artist, Stella Steyn
Oil on board, 40 x 30cm (15¾ x 11¾’’)
€ 1,000 - 1,500

127
135 FERGUS O’RYAN RHA (1910-1989)
River Landscape
Oil on board, 61 x 87cm (24 x 34¼’’)
Signed
€ 1,200 - 1,800
134 SEAN MCSWEENEY RHA (1935-2018)
Evening Bogland
Oil on board, 13 x 36cm (5 x 14¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sale, de Veres, September 2002,
Lot 19.
€ 800 - 1,200

128
137 AFTER PAUL HENRY RHA (1877-1958)
Come to Ulster for a Better Holiday (c.1930)
Colour lithograph, 101 x 127cm (39¾ x 50’’)
Printed by S.C. Allen & Co. Belfast
Unframed
€ 600 - 800
136 ALEXANDER WILLIAMS RHA (1846-1930)
Holy Island, Lough Derg, Shannon
Signed
Provenance: With Eastbourne Fine Art, Sussex.
Exhibited: London, Modern Gallery, ‘The Land of the Shamrock’, 1903,
Catalogue No.95.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

129
138 WILLIAM BINGHAM MCGUINNESS RHA (1849-1928)
Rue Horloge Rouen and Laudebee en Seine
A pair, watercolour, 36 x 25cm (14¼ x 9¾’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1878
€ 1,500 - 2,500

130
140 GERARD BYRNE (B.1958)
Colliemore Harbour and Dalkey Island,
Co. Dublin
Oil on canvas, 120 x 80cm (47¼ x 31½’’)
Signed
€ 1,000 - 2,000
139 JAMES ENGLISH RHA (B.1946)
The Workshop, Spain
Oil on board, 25 x 20cm (9¾ x 8’’)
Signed; also signed, inscribed and dated (20)’04
with studio label verso
€ 600 - 800

131
142 PETER PEARSON (B.1955)
September Sun, Dun Laoghaire Harbour
Oil on board, 36 x 83cm (14¼ x 32¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Solomon Gallery, Dublin,
label verso.
€ 800 - 1,200
141 BRETT MCENTAGART RHA (B.1939)
Woodland Rhododendrons
Oil on panel, 25 x 34.5cm (10 x 13½’’)
€ 500 - 700

Adams important irish art 12th june 2019

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