Adam's important Irish Art 2nd September 2020

Est1887
Auction Wednesday 2nd
September 2020
IMPORTANT IRISH ART

Front cover : Lot 53 Jack B. Yeats
Back cover : Lot 16 Paul Henry
Inside front : Lot 30 Patrick Collins
Inside back : Lot 54 Sir Gerald Kelly
Opposite : Lot 36 Jack B. Yeats

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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 BA
FINE ART DEPARTMENT
h.carlyle@adams.ie
Niamh Corcoran BA
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 2nd
September 2020 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
info@adams.ie
Important Irish Art Preview
ADAM’S
Est.1887
AUGUST 28TH
- SEPTEMBER 2ND

Friday 28th
August 10.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday 29th
August 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Sunday 30th
August 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Monday 31st
August 10.00am - 5.00pm
Tuesday 1st
September 10.00am - 5.00pm
Wednesday 2nd
September 10.00am - 4.00pm

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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 3rd
September 2020. 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 4th
September 2020 at the purchaser’s risk and expense. After this time
all uncollected lots will be removed to commercial storage and additional charges will apply.
Auctioneers commission on purchases is charged at the rate of 25% (inclusive of VAT).
Terms: Strictly cash, card, bankers draft or cheque drawn on an Irish bank. Cheques will take a minimum of eight 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.
We also accept payment by credit and debit card (Visa & MasterCard only). For payments by bank transfer 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 1st September 2020 as we cannot guarantee that they
will be dealt with after this time.
6. Absentee Bids
We are happy to execute absentee or written bids for bidders who are unable to attend and can arrange for bidding to be conducted by tele-
phone. However, these services are subject to special conditions (see conditions of sale in this catalogue). All arrangements for absentee and
telephone bidding must be made before 5pm on the day prior to sale. Cancellation of bids must be confirmed before this time and cannot
be guaranteed after the auction as commenced.
Bidding by telephone may be booked on lots with a minimum estimate of €500. Early booking is advisable as availability of lines cannot be
guaranteed.
7. Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge, with thanks, the assistance of Dickon Hall, Dr. Denise Ferran, Dr. S.B. Kennedy, Dr. Roisin Kennedy, Prof.
Niamh O’Sullivan, Aiden Dunne, Niamh Corcoran, Joseph McBrinn, Helena Carlyle and Niall McMonagle in the preparation of this cata-
logue.
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 | 4th
December 2019
T.P. & Sheelagh Flanagan, their lives together :
A Studio Collection
James O’Halloran talks with
Author and Art Historian Dickon Hall
Invitations for this Online Event will be issued in the coming weeks
Author and Art Historian, Dickon Hall will discuss the work of T.P. Flanagan, and
in particular the sixteen works from T.P. and Sheelagh’s personal collection which
are featured in this sale, with James O’Halloran.
If interested in this online event please contact us for further details.
All are welcome.

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1 CECIL MAGUIRE RHA RUA
(B.1930)
Some Sheep for Inishlackan - Johnnie McDonagh
Oil on board, 35 x 45cm (13¾ x 17¾’’)
Signed and dated (19)’92; also signed and inscribed verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000

www.adams.ie Important Irish Art | 2nd September 2020
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(B.1930)
Men of Inismaan
Oil on board 24.5 x 29.5cm (9¾ x 11¾’’)
Signed, also signed and inscribed with title verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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4 MAURICE C. WILKS
RUA ARHA
(1910-1984)
Connemara
Oil on board, 40 x 50cm
(15¾ x 19¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The
Bell Gallery, Belfast, label
inscribed and dated
indistinctly.
€ 1,500 - 2,500
3 MAURICE C. WILKS
RUA ARHA
(1910-1984)
Back of the Mournes, Co.
Down
Oil on board, 40 x 50cm
(15¾ x 19¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The
Bell Gallery, Belfast, label
inscribed and dated De-
cember 1966.
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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5 MAURICE C. WILKS RUA ARHA
(1910-1984)
Near Letterfrack, Co. Galway
Oil on canvas, 41 x 51cm (16 x 20’’)
Signed; inscribed verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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6 CECIL GALBALLY RHA
(1911-1995)
Organ Grinders
Oil on board, 30 x 40cm (11¾ x 15¾’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

13
(B.1930)
Galway Shawls, Inishmaan
Oil on board, 50 x 60cm (19¾ x 23½’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed verso
€ 8,000 - 12,000

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8 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Ruins at Ypres
Watercolour, 23 x 32cm (9
x 12½’’)
Signed and inscribed
‘Ypres’
€ 1,000 - 1,500
9 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Coastal Scene
Watercolour, 10.5 x 21cm
(4 x 8¼’’)
Signed
€ 700 - 1,000

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10 WILLIAM PERCY FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Birds in Flight over Wetland
Watercolour, 29 x 50cm (11½ x 19¾’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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12 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Lakeland Scene
Watercolour, 15 x 19.5cm
(6 x 7¾’’)
Signed with initials
€ 1,000 - 2,000
11 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Cottage in Landscape
Watercolour, 17 x 24cm
(6¾ x 9½’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,500

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14 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
Dusk over Forest
(4¾ x 6¾’’)
€ 1,500 - 2,000
13 WILLIAM PERCY
FRENCH
(1854-1920)
That Evening Cloud
Watercolour, 18 x 27cm (7
x 10½’’)
Signed
€ 3,000 - 5,000

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15 PAUL HENRY RHA
(1877-1958)
Connemara Landscape
Oil on canvas board, 25 x 30cm (10 x 14’’)
Signed
Provenance: A Private Dublin Collection
Dated to the mid-1930s on stylistic grounds, this quintessential work by Henry displays all the
classic characteristics he is known and loved for. The visual emphasis is placed on the two
thatched cottages in the foreground, caught in light and delineated with the warm greens that
line the lake shore. To the left are several layers of undulating bog-land rendered in browns,
ochres and blues as they recede into the distance. The turf mounds punctuate the composition
and along with the homesteads provide a sense of human presence.
Henry has applied the paint with his usual great care, and the sense of freshness and clear air,
which pervades the whole composition, also typifies much of the artist’s work of this period.
We are indebted to Dr. S.B.Kennedy whose writings have formed the basis of this note.
€ 30,000 - 50,000

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16 PAUL HENRY RHA
(1877-1958)
Hay Stooks with Cottages
Oil on board, 32.4 x 37.5cm (12¾ x 14¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: A Private Cork Collection
Likely to date to the 1920s, this charming and unusual work depicts a small settlement with
five simple thatched cottages nestling under a somewhat foreboding deep blue mountain,
beautifully modeled in the artist’s signature transparent glazes.
The use of pale green is uncommon in Henry’s palette but it unifies the cottages and main-
tains the sense of community, providing a central lush band of greenery that is then counter-
balanced with the ripe cornfield in the foreground. Also of unusual note is the artist’s use of
a collection of corn-stooks, rarely seen in his work, normally being eschewed in favour of the
ubiquitous turf mounds.
Painted on plywood and framed in traditional black moulding, it has the original old trade
label of John Gilbert (Sidney Gilbert), Print Seller and Frame Maker of 120 Patrick Street, Cork.
The label also boasts that Gilbert was Optician to the Eye Hospital And to the Faculty.
€ 50,000 - 70,000

www.adams.ie
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Important Irish Art | 2nd September 2020

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17 MICHAEL HEALY RHA
(1873-1941)
Stooks of Corn
Oil on board, 21 x 32.5cm
(8¼ x 12¾’’)
Provenance: With the
Peppercanister Gallery,
Dublin. Collection of
Antoinette & Patrick J.
Murphy.
€ 300 - 500
18 PATRICK TUOHY RHA
(1893-1930)
The Strand Near Arklow
(Previously known as
Brittas Bay)
Oil on board, 28.5 x 39cm
(11¼ x 15¼’’)
Inscribed by the artist
verso
Provenance: With James
Gorry Gallery, 1965,
where purchased. Col-
lection of Antoinette &
Patrick J. Murphy.
Exhibited: Retrospective
Exhibition, 1930.
Literature: ‘Patrick Tuohy:
Conversations with His
Friends, 2004, full colour
illustration; Patrick J.
Murphy, ‘A Passion for
Collecting: A Memoir’,
2012.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

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19 EVIE HONE HRHA
(1894-1955)
In the Woods at Marley
Watercolour, 38 x 32cm (15 x 12½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
Collection of Antoinette & Patrick J. Murphy.
€ 2,500 - 3,500

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20 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA
(1915-1980)
Still Life with apples, bowl and pink cloth
Oil on canvas,
Painted with mare in stable verso
Provenance: Given to the present owner’s father,
Professor George Fegan, by the artist.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

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21 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA
(1915-1980)
Sea Wall (1972)
Oil on canvas, 38 x 64cm (15 x 25¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: With David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, from whom pur-
chased by Mr. Peter Maguire, November 1972; thence by descent to
the current owner.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

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22 NEVILL JOHNSON
(1911-1999)
Marcel’s Garden
Oil, ink and wash on board, 45 x 37cm (17¾ x 14½’’)
Signed; also signed, inscribed and dated (19)’57 verso
Exhibited: ‘Irish Exhibition of Living Art’, 1957.
€ 1,500 - 2,000

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23 THURLOE CONNOLLY
(1918-2016)
Painting
Oil on canvas, 30 x 27.5cm (11¾ x 10¾’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1943
Exhibited: ‘The White Stag Group’, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 6th July-4th October
2005.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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24 NORAH MCGUINNESS
HRHA
(1901-1980)
Murrisk Abbey
Mixed media on paper, 26 x
33cm (10¼ x 13’’)
Signed with initials and
inscribed in pencil.
€ 800 - 1,200
25 COLIN MIDDLETON
RHA RUA MBE
(1910-1983)
Women in Boat (1941)
Pen & ink, 14 x 19cm (5½ x
7½’’)
Signed with monogram and
dated Dec 10, 1941
€ 600 - 800

www.adams.ie Important Irish Art | 2nd Septembr 2020
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26 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE
(1910-1983)
Landscape
Oil on board, 30 x 30cm (11¾ x 11¾’’)
Signed with monogram
€ 2,000 - 3,000

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27 GEORGE CAMPBELL
RHA
(1917-1979)
Figure by a Bridge
(9¾ x 13¾’’)
Provenance: Acquired
from the artist’s fami-
ly; sale, these rooms,
28.03.07, lot 110, where
purchased by the present
owner.
€ 1,000 - 1,500
28 PATRICK PYE RHA
(1929-2018)
Dark Landscape
Watercolour, 23 x 33.5cm
(9 x 13¼’’)
Signed and dated 1947
Provenance: With Bell
Gallery, label verso.
€ 700 - 1,000

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29 ARTHUR ARMSTRONG RHA
(1924-1996)
Mother and Child
Oil on board, 61.5 x 77cm (24¼ x 30¼’’)
Inscribed verso
€ 5,000 - 8,000

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30 PATRICK COLLINS HRHA
(1910-1994)
Lake Swan Feeding (1969)
Oil on board 35 x 50cm (13¾ x 19½“)
Signed
Provenance: With Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, label verso.
€ 10,000 - 15,000
Born Dromore West, County Sligo, in 1910, Patrick Collins grew up in Riverstown and, later, in Sligo town but
his father, an RIC constable, contracted tuberculosis, was unable to work, and died when Collins was twelve.
Patrick Collins’s younger sister also died and his mother, widowed when Collins was thirteen, ran a little gro-
cery shop until her health also failed. Collins was sent at fourteen to St Vincent’s Orphanage in Glasnevin and
having done well at school worked in an insurance company in Dublin for twenty years.
Looking back on those years, Collins told Harriet Cooke, in 1973, that he lived near Stephen’s Green, and
‘every morning I’d walk through it around nine, and every day it was different, and every day the whole thing
has a new scene. The birds and trees, when I look at them I read them like a book. When you’re interested in
birds, you see bits of difference.’
He read widely, attended evening art classes at the National College of Art but was mainly self-taught and,
in his mid-thirties, he became a full-time artist. He had his first solo show in 1956. Collins’s west-of-Ireland
background not only influenced his subject matter, landscape, lakes, birds, but his sympathy for the margin-
alised, as seen in a masterpiece such as Travelling Tinkers [1968], can be understood in the light of Collins’s
own family challenges and difficulties. But what is most distinctive about Collins’s work is his palette of blues
and grey and grey blues and his use of a framing device or border within the work, a window, as it were, into
another world. Fionna Barber in Art in Ireland [2013] sees ‘the indication of a frame within a frame’ as a device
that amplifies ‘a sense of displacement’ and ‘the perception of another reality within the painting’.
For Collins, ‘It is the aura of an object which interests me, more than the object. I see a few bottles on a table
and I feel there is more than a few bottles. It is the something more I try to paint.’ So, too, with this swan on a
lake. It is both swan and aura and swans in Irish mythology, what Collins called ‘the Celtic thing’, perhaps res-
onate here. In Lake Swan Feeding the swan is centre, its pure white presence, amid a misty grey, blue, green
lake, is recognisable, as is a group of swans, background, top right. The single swan is alone, yes. Is that swan
lonely? That’s up to the viewer. As Peter Murray observes, ‘Collins preferred to leave the interpretation to the
observer, acknowledging that the viewer creates the work of art at the moment of apprehension’. Other bird
paintings, Bird against the Window from 1963, for example, could be seen as an image of longing, escape
and Collins himself said that his The Rook: Bird in a Tree, captured his lonely years in the orphanage. Not for
Collins, Yeats’s nine-and-fifty swan. This feeding swan is on its own but the feeding detail in the title suggests
a swan at ease and being nourished.
When Patrick Collins died in 1994 his ashes were scattered on the shore of Lough Gill. Ciara Ferguson who
was at the ceremony remembered how ‘We gathered at the side of Lough Gill, at the place where he played
as a boy, and, as the ashes scattered, the only sound was a lone piper. Tony Cronin gave the oration. Then,
suddenly, everyone turned to the sound of a frantic beating of snow-white wings as a single swan took to the
air with all the drama and poignancy of, well, the free spirit of Paddy.’
In 1958 Collins won a Guggenheim Award for his ‘Liffey Quayside’, won the Irish landscape prize in 1971, was
elected HRHA in 1980, a member of Aosdána in 1981 and Saoi in 1987, the first visual artist so honoured. He
was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Trinity College in 1988 and his work is in every major Irish col-
lection.
Niall MacMonagle, February 2020

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31 DONALD TESKEY RHA
(B.1956)
Coastal Report I
Oil on paper, 76.2 x 101.6cm (30 x 40’’)
Signed
€ 10,000 - 15,000
One of the leading Irish artists of his generation, Donald Teskey is so well known as a superbly tactile
painter of coastal landscapes, concentrated on the sea, it can be hard to credit that he devoted a
considerable part of his early career to drawing. More, his drawings were of the city. When he turned
to painting, urban subject matter continued to dominate. But his work, whether drawing or painting,
was always dynamic, always in thrall to the rush and flow of light, wind and air through the topography
of street and alley, railway and canal, and through anomalous open spaces. In retrospect, we can see
his rendering of areas of, say, Milltown or Dublin 8, as, literally, urban landscapes, with for example
the industrial expanses of the Guinness complex around James’s St interpreted as manmade cliffs
and canyons.
Of Palatine descent, Teskey was born in Rathkeale, and studied at Limerick School of Art and Design.
Limerick city featured in his early, exceptionally accomplished drawings, but he had long been based
in Dublin by the time he was seriously drawn back to the west. In the mid-1990s, he was invited to
visit the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle on the north Mayo coast. A monumental, uncom-
promising terrain was at his doorstep. As he observed, his paintings were built on the armature of
urban structure, and for a time he did paint the structural fabric of Ballycastle and its surroundings.
Besides returning often to Mayo, he also stayed at Ballinskelligs in Co Kerry and on the West Cork
coast. Gradually he moved beyond the coastal infrastructure of coastal villages, piers and harbours
to address the sea itself. As he put it: “It was a question of finding an organic structure that allows the
paint to speak.”
He found that structure in the elemental clash of sea and shore. The moment when a wave hits rock
crystallises a dynamic balance of matter and energy. This oil is an exceptionally pure expression of
the artist’s fascination with that moment of impact, when you are standing down on the rocks and the
vast energy of the ocean breaches the steadfast boundary of the shore. He has said that he aims to
capture exactly that moment in paint.
Aiden Dunne, February 2020

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32 BRIAN BOURKE
(B.1936)
Winter, Knock-a-lough
Mixed media, 62 x 54.5cm (24½ x 21½’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated (19)’77-’78
Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, Dublin 1978, Catalogue
no.28.
Provenance: Collection of Antoinette & Patrick J. Murphy.
€ 1,500 - 2,000

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33 SEAN MCSWEENEY HRHA
(1935-2018)
Morning Bogland
Oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm (23½ x 31½’’)
Signed and inscribed verso
€ 6,000 - 8,000

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35 TONY O’MALLEY HRHA
(1913-2003)
Iasc Buí or Yellow Fish (1996)
Oil on board, 90 x 60cm (35½ x 23½’’)
Signed with initials; also signed with initials, in-
scribed with title and dated 1996 verso
Exhibited: Kelly’s Hotel, Wexford, 2000.
€ 8,000 - 12,000
34 SEAN MCSWEENEY HRHA
(1935-2018)
Trees, Hollywood Wood (1979);
Snow on the Quarry Hill, Hollywood, Wicklow
(1979);
Winter Trees (Mileys Gate), Wicklow (1979);
Trees in a Wicklow Landscape (c.1980)
Four watercolours, 13 x 20cm (5 x 7¾’’); 14.7 x
20.3cm (5¾ x 8’’); 14.7 x 20.3cm (5¾ x 8’’); 14.5
x 20.5cm (5¾ x 8’’)
Signed. (4)
€ 800 - 1,200
Tony O’Malley became a member of the St Ives Art
Group in Cornwall when he moved there in 1960. The
artist’s colony included Peter Lanyon and Sir Terry
Frost with whom he became close friends, however as
an artist he preferred to paint on his own and was not
greatly influenced by others but his life’s experiences
and his travels with his wife, the artist Jane O’Malley.
Iasc Buí or Yellow Fish, painted in 1996, draws on his
memory of ‘place’ and on the colour palette gained
from visiting the Bahamas. This ‘inscape’ was utilised
by O’Malley particularly in the later years on his re-
turn to Ireland when he completed his ‘pond series’
paintings of which this is a prime example. His tech-
nique of incising the surface of the painting creates a
sculptural, almost 3D effect. Iasc Buí references the
shimmering heat of his Bahamas paintings while the
Monet-like subject matter where fish appear amongst
the water lilies is the inspiration behind this work.
O’Malley achieved many accolades as an artist, a
member of Aosdana, elected Saoi in 1993, which was
restricted to five living artists, and in 1994 he was con-
ferred with an honorary doctorate by Trinity College,
Dublin.

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36 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA
(1871-1957)
Bound for the Islands (1952)
Oil on board, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14’’)
Signed; inscribed with title verso
Provenance: Purchased in 1953 by Mr & Mrs Nesbit Waddington at the Victor Waddington
Galleries and thence by descent; Private Collection, Dublin.
Literature: Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, 1992,
Andre Deutch, Catalogue no. 1115.
This very late painting by Yeats, made when he was 80 years old, was bought directly from
the Victor Waddington Galleries by Nesbit Waddington in 1953. It shows a sailor standing
on a headland waving out to a boat on the sea below. His blue sou’wester hat and dark
complexion lend him an exotic air, as if he himself has travelled far. The tiny toy-like boat is
placed at the centre of the composition. Beyond it on the horizon are the ghostly forms of
an island, its cliffs rising from the sea. Hilary Pyle has speculated that this may refer to the
Aran Islands. The composition is similar to other late works such as The Circus has Come,
(1952, Private Collection) and Many Ferries, (1948, National Gallery of Ireland), which also
show an isolated figure looking down at an expanse of water. The dramatic rupture be-
tween the foreground and background of the painting introduces a sense of ambiguity.
It is as if the sea, island and boat belong to a realm of fantasy or memory. The meeting of
the sea and sky and the predominance of pale blue and white is suggestive of open space
and of a place where the imagination holds sway. The boat and its occupants, bound for
the islands, may refer to those who are free to depart to new horizons while the sailor, like
much of humanity, bids them well but remains behind.
Dr. Roisin Kennedy
€ 50,000 -70,000

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37 WILLIAM JOHN LEECH RHA ROI
(1881-1968)
St. Anne and the Poppies
Oil on canvas, 55 x 46cm (21½ x 18’’)
Signed; inscribed verso
€ 6,000 - 10,000
When Leech’s parents departed their Dublin home, Wilmar, Dartry Road, for London in 1910, Leech
divided his life between London and France, from then until after the First World War. During this
period, he lived in Concarneau, in Brittany with his American partner, fellow artist Saurin Elizabeth
Kerlin, who became his wife in 1912. However, after Leech’s first visit to Concarneau in 1903, where
he first met Elizabeth, he returned again in 1904, at the same time that Lavery returned to paint with
his friend Milner Kite. Kite’s painting style and bright palette influenced Leech, which is evident in
Leech’s painting ‘Caves in Concarneau’ with its Fauve colours. ‘St.Anne and the Poppies’ has echoes
of this palette with the bright orange of the poppies, one of which makes a halo behind St. Anne’s
head, contrasted against the strong greens and blues in the foreground and background.
Brittany was, and indeed, still is a religious area of France and the earliest saint associated with the
region is St. Anne with L’Eglise du Sainte-Anne du Pasage, in Concarneau. It was customary to create
a small altar to St. Anne in homes, with a vase of flowers and candles, as in this painting. This was a
suitable subject for Leech, in his use of strident colour bathed in strong sunlight, coming from the left.
Traditionally St. Anne was depicted in two main colours, red and green, one for love and the other
for rebirth, as she was the mother of the Virgin Mary. The Gospel of St. James, details the life of St.
Anne who was from Bethlehem and her husband Joachim, who was from Nazareth, both described
as being from the House of David.
Traditionally too, the statue of St. Anne usually has a young Mary beside her but in this work St. Anne
has the figure of a Rabbi. This work has all the hallmarks of a later Leech, in the diagonal created by
the fallen poppy on the table top, the effect of light on the glass vase and the stems and leaves of the
poppy in his search for ‘sunlight and shadows.’
As Leech has inscribed RHA after his name, this work dates after 1910 when Leech rented a large
house, overlooking the sea at Plage des Dames, a sheltered curved bay of silvery, shingled sand, on
the outskirts of Concarneau. Leech continued to painted some of his best work between 1910 and
1918, before the effects of the Great War and the breakup of his marriage in 1919, which destroyed
these times of happiness and hope and this period of his life.
Dr Denise Ferran, February 2020

43

44
38 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON RHA
(1878-1964)
Still Life with Flowers in a Jug
Oil on board, 39 x 32cm (15¼ x 12½’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

45
39 LETITIA MARION HAMILTON RHA
(1878-1964)
The Lustre Vase
Oil on canvas laid on board, 49 x 39cm (19¼ x 15¼’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed with title verso
€ 2,500 - 3,500

46
41 SAMUEL JOHN MURPHY
(1851-C.1920)
The Fruit Seller
Oil on canvas laid on panel, 35.5 x 30.5cm (14 x
12”)
Exhibited: Cork, Cork Industrial Exhibition, 1883,
Gallery of Modern Paintings, no. 24, £12 12.
Provenance: Mucklow’s Gallery, 35 Cranbourn
St., Covent Garden, London c. 1930s, label,
verso.
Samuel John Murphy was born in county Cork
in 1851. He was a pupil of the Cork School of
Art and a contemporary of Joseph Poole Addey
(1852-1922) and Henry Jones Thaddeus (1859-
1929). Murphy became Head of the Waterford
School of Art in 1875 and married Emily Jane
Falls in 1878. Later, Murphy became involved in
the lace-making industry. Accompanied by fellow
Cork artist, James Brenan (1837-1907), then head
of the Cork School of Art, Murphy travelled to
Alençon, France, whose needle-lace was dubbed
‘the Queen of lace.’[1] Here, to study the tech-
niques of the Alençon workers, both men met
with Ernest Lefébure (d.1913), a lace manufactur-
er who would later become the Administrator of
the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. He contin-
ued to paint and exhibit during this time, how-
ever, and was a painter of scenes of equestrian,
genre, and marine interest, as well as portraits.
His latest known work is dated 1890. The 1911
Census confirms Murphy resided at 7, Newtown
Rd., Waterford City. He remained an Art Master,
but had become a widower. An equestrian scene
by Murphy forms part of the collection of the
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork City (CAG.489).
1] P. Wardle, Victorian Lace (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1968)
€ 600 - 800
40 ROBERT SANDERSON
(1848-1908)
Lost, Bedad!-An Irishman playing cards at a table
Oil on canvas laid on panel, 23 x 18cm (9 x 7”)
Signed and dated 1901; further signed, and in-
scribed with title and artist’s address on exhibi-
tion label, verso.
Exhibited: Paisley, Paisley Art Institute Exhibition,
1901.
€ 600 - 800

47
43 ROBERT RICHARD
SCANLON
(1801-1876)
On Her Majesty’s Service
Oil on canvas, 42 x
60.8cm (16½ x 24’’)
€ 1,000 - 1,500
42 ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM BROCAS RHA
(1794-1868)
Mountain Dew - Figures and Horses in a Landscape, Ruins Beyond
Oil on canvas, 63 x 91 (24.75 x 35.75”)
€ 1,500 - 2,000

48
44 SAMUEL MCCLOY
(1831-1904)
Mother and Children
Outside Cottage
Watercolour, 35 x 47.5cm,
(13.75 x 18.75”)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
45 ROSE MAYNARD
BARTON RWS
(1859-1929)
The Royal Mews, August
9th 1902
(4 x 5’’)
Signed and inscribed
‘Wishing you a Happy
New Year’
Provenance: Sotheby’s
3rd November 1993, Lot
no. 183.
€ 600 - 1,000

49
46 EDITH SCANNELL
(1852 -1940)
Study of a Young Girl with a
Hat
Oil on canvas 98 x 75cm
(38½ x 29½)
Signed
€ 2,000 - 4,000
Edith Maud Susanna Scannell lived and worked in Kensington,
London. She studied for two years under M. Jacquand in Paris,
but also in Florence, Rome and Pisa, under Bellucci, Bompiani
and Lanfredini, and for a short time at the Slade School of Art in
London.
She exhibited eleven works at the Royal Hibernian Academy in
Dublin between 1885 and 1897, and was a regular contributor
to the Royal Academy in London, and also exhibited in Italy
and Belgium. Her favoured subjects were children, which it is
said she painted ‘con amore’, and she was known for a charming
freshness and naivety in her painting style. Edith Scannell found
much work as both illustrator for The Art Amateur magazine, and
also as an illustrator of children’s books in England and the USA.

50
47 ALOYSIUS O’KELLY
(1853-1936)
A Breton Garden
Oil on canvas, 80 x 100cm (31½ x 39¼’’)
Signed
€ 6,000 - 10,000
Quintessentially a work by Aloysius O’Kelly, this painting dates to the early twentieth
century. The subject matter, style and treatment is typical of O’Kelly’s Breton work at
this time.
In 1874, O’Kelly had enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, gaining access to the
most prestigious studio, that of Jean-Léon Gérôme. From the mid 1870s, during the
summer recess, huge numbers of artists made the annual painting pilgrimage from the
ateliers of Paris to Brittany, initially to Pont-Aven then Concarneau and beyond, in keep-
ing with the cult of peasant realism that swept through the salons of the day. O’Kelly
was constantly on the move around the region.
Here he reconciled a range of styles derived from both traditional and avant-garde art,
blending academic, realist and plein-air elements into a beguiling mode of naturalism.
O’Kelly was wont to employ an Impressionist-type technique for his outdoor subjects,
while relying on more traditional academic techniques for his indoor scenes. In this
summer scene, he enlivens the rather heavily-composed farmhouse and outhouses
with some spontaneity, evident in the handling of the verdant foliage.
Niamh O’Sullivan

51

52
48 NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA
(1901-1980)
Lobster Pots, Brittany
Oil on canvas, 45 x 60cm (17¾ x 23½’’)
Signed
€ 15,000 - 20,000
In this work we are presented with a small snapshot of life in north western France where lobster fishing was an
industry central to the coastal region. The traditional wicker pots used for trapping the lobster dominate the
foreground of the painting. One can imagine McGuinness visiting the harbour, making sketches of the everyday
rituals of the local fishing community. On this occasion the pots lie idle on the beach, awaiting their next journey
out to sea. McGuinness uses a tightly cropped composition, suggesting the harbour stretching out beyond to
the horizon on the left and the winding road sweeping up to the right, where a woman walks pushing a pram. A
man stands behind her, facing the harbour, moving down a slipway towards the water’s edge.
Although the work is not dated, there are other known examples of paintings by McGuiness of the Breton land-
scape, such as the Les Bigoudenes in the Niland Collection, Sligo which depicts the Breton women wearing tradi-
tional tall lace headdresses of the Pays Bigouden region. This painting appeared in exhibition of McGuinness’
work at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1951. Or another titled Breton Port which was exhibited in The Irish
Exhibition of Living Art, 1950. While none of these works are dated by the artist it would suggest that she was
working in the area in the late 1940s, early 1950s and would place this lot in a similar time frame.
This was many years after her initial visit to France, when on the advice of fellow Irish artist Mainie Jellett, she
travelled to Paris in 1929 to study with the cubist painter André Lhote. McGuinness was not as heavily influenced
by the theories of cubism as Jellett nor did she adopt them as broadly in her own work. Throughout her career
she maintained an interest in figural and representational subject matter, while at the same time introducing a
heightened colour palette and broad expressive brushstrokes.
In this work the colours take central importance, the surface of the painting is brought to life through the range
of tones used by McGuiness, the ochre red of the sand, the dark green of the seaweed, the bright electric blue
on the inside of the boat moored on shoreline. She uses thick, expressive brushstrokes, applying the paint in
quick motions particularly in the sea, where the shifts in colour from white to blueish green suggest the passing
light moving across the water’s surface. The vertical upright form of the ship mast is mirrored in the lighthouse in
the background balancing the composition and creating a framing device for the scene taking place in between.
A large country house stands overlooking the harbour, diminutive next to the trees, their full blossom outlined by
McGuinness with the end of her brush, scraping lines into the painted canvas.
This work is an interesting comparison to the established painted imagery of the region. In particular the over-
whelming religious iconography associated with the traditional Breton clothing, that so compelled the French
Impressionists and early 20th century painters who visited and lived in the artistic community of the region.
McGuinness focuses on another aspect of this which feels slightly more considered in its expression of everyday
life. She is an observer, avoiding the tendency to mythologise the traditions of the Breton people.
Niamh Corcoran, February 2020.

53

54
49 EVIE HONE HRHA (1894-1955)
The Garden at Gethsemane
Gouache, 29 x 24cm (11½ x 9½’’)
Provenance: From the estate of
Margaret Clarke.
€ 1,500 - 2,000
50 EVIE HONE HRHA
(1894-1955)
Study for Christ Carrying the Cross
Gouache on paper, 50 x 40 cm (19¾ x
15¾’’)
€ 600 - 800

55
51 MAINIE JELLETT
(1897-1944)
Composition
Gouache, 26 x 17cm (10¼ x 6¾’’)
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
Collection of Antoinette & Patrick J. Murphy.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

56
52 DANIEL O’NEILL
(1920-1974)
The Four Provinces of Ireland -
Ulster, Mt. Errigal, Donegal;
Munster, Carrantuohill, Kerry;
Leinster, Glendalough, Wicklow;
Connacht, The Twelve Bens, Galway
A set of four, Oil on board, 17.5 x 25.5cm (6¾ x 10’’)
Each signed; also inscribed with titles verso
€ 20,000 - 30,000
Belfast painter Daniel O’Neill made the decision to paint full time in 1945
having worked as an electrician in the Belfast shipyards. He first exhibit-
ed with Victor Waddington in Dublin in 1946, and later with the Dawson
Gallery in the 1960s. He moved to London in the late 1950s, finally return-
ing to Belfast in 1969, where he continued to paint his highly recognisable
portraits and landscapes. The evocative style and intense colours used by
O’Neill make for poignant and expressive pictures, and he has often been
described as a romantic painter.

57

58
(1871-1957)
The Sick Bed (1950)
Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 61cm (18 x 24’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sold through Victor Waddington Galleries, April 1952 to S. Briskin,
USA; Waddington Galleries London; Private Collection.
Literature: Hilary Pyle, ‘Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings’,
London, Andre Deutsch, 1992, Catalogue No.1034, illustrated Vol. III, p.526.
€ 250,000 - 350,000

59

60
Yeats’s painting refers both to the sentimentality and to the genuine emotion of Victorian sick room
imagery, in which the surroundings serve as ‘a haven of comfort, order and natural affection’ in
contrast to the complexities of the world outside. The work concentrates on the psychological and
emotional interaction between the two protagonists, the patient and the visitor.
The man in a dark blue suit and tie sits at the bedside of a woman whose head is reclining on a pil-
low. He gazes intently at the patient, his concern conveyed by the concentration of his expression
and by the pose of his body as he leans towards his companion. Impasto paint is used to mould his
narrowed eyes in a simple fashion. The head of the woman is sculpted out of very thick paint. Its
pallor indicates her physical weakness and strongly differentiates her from her attendant. Between
the two profiles, a window opens onto a vista of blue and green landscape and sky. This alleviates the
tension of the encounter and brings in an element of peace and natural beauty. To the left a yellow
chequered pattern can be discerned, suggestive of wallpaper or perhaps a curtain round the bed.
The light tonalities of the colours makes this a remarkably tranquil representation of a poignant
encounter while the dynamic use of brushstroke suggests movement and life. Paint is very thinly
applied across large parts of the composition, revealing the surface of the canvas and foregrounding
the physical construction of the painting. As in many of Yeats’s later works the viewer is prompted
to engage with how the work has been made rather than passively absorbing its ostensible subject
matter. The physical construction of the painting works against the sentimentality of the latter, forc-
ing the viewer to question its veracity.
[1] Miriam Bailin, The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction: The Art of Being Ill, (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Dr. Roisin Kennedy, February 2020

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62
54 SIR GERALD FESTUS KELLY PRA RHA
(1879-1972)
Ma Than E
Oil on Canvas, 97 x 84cm (38 x 33’’)
€ 40,000 - 60,000
Exhibited: Royal Academy, London, Summer Exhibition 1938, Cat. No. 253; Brighton Exhibition
1938 untraced; Royal Hibernian Academy, Duiblin 1939, Cat. No. 35 (N.F.S.); Sir Gerald Festus Kelly
Retrospective Exhibition, Royal Academy London 1957, Cat. No. 189, where lent by A.P. Reynolds
Esq.
In correspondence from the artist in March 1969 in relation to this painting, Sir Gerald refers to it
as ‘’one of the very best paintings I ever did of a Burmese Girl, who, by the way, was a little duck’’.
Sir Gerald Festus Kelly was born in London, 1879. He was educated at Eton College followed by
Trinity College Cambridge. After his university studies he travelled to Paris where he remained
for many years, receiving an artistic training and befriending Degas, Renoir, Monet, Rodin and
Cezanne among others. Kelly travelled extensively during his lifetime, choosing exotic locations
such as Burma and Africa as well as the closer climes of Italy and Spain for his inspiration. He paint-
ed many pictures of beautiful, porcelain-skinned young Burmese women, sometimes dancing but
often posed as in this portrait, kneeling with a blanket covering their lower body. Although Kelly’s
choice of subject for his paintings was varied, it was perhaps for his portraits that he became best
known, executing several State portraits and many paintings of society ladies and gentlemen,
bishops and lords of the time.
Brian Kennedy in his book ‘Irish Art and Modernism 1880-1950’ (p.167) wrote : ‘Apart from Dermod
O’Brien, the other outstanding portraitists year after year were Sir William Orpen (until 1917 when
he last exhibited), Sir John Lavery and Sir Gerald Kelly, but as they lived in England their influence
was less than it might otherwise have been.’
Sir Gerald Festus Kelly exhibited over 300 works at the Royal Academy in London from 1909 until
1970 and held the Presidency from 1949-54. This painting was shown at the Royal Academy in
1957 as part of the ‘Sir Gerald Festus Kelly Retrospective Exhibition’. In Ireland Kelly exhibited at
the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1905-1969, the Oireachtas Art Exhibition in 1932 (No. 9 - Mrs
Hamilton and No. 10 - Celestine del Pino of Trinidad) and also at the Ulster Academy of Arts in 1948
(No. 41 - Her Majesty the Queen). Gerald Kelly received a knighthood in 1945 - no doubt for his
astounding talent in representing people and places with extreme delicacy and beauty. He was a
highly successful artist during his lifetime but his name seems not to have lived on as it did with his
peers Sir William Orpen and Sir John Lavery. Sir Gerald Festus Kelly died in London in 1972. His
work is housed in several public collections, among them the National Portrait Gallery, London,
the Tate Gallery, London and the Royal College of Music, London.
Literature: D. Hudson, ‘For the Love of Painting - The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly’, 1975; S.B. Kennedy,
‘Irish Art and Modernism 1880-1950’, Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University, Belfast, 1991;
Brian Stewart and Mervyn Cutten, ‘Dictionary of Painters in Britain up to 1920’.

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64
55 GERALD LESLIE BROCKHURST
(1890-1978)
Portrait of Charlotte Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Oil on board, 60 x 47cm (23½ x 18½’’)
Signed
€ 10,000 - 15,000
Last year Gerald Brockhurst’s portrait of Florence Forsyth attracted much attention when it came
under the hammer at Adam’s. The painting had been commissioned by Florence’s father, who
worked for Norwich Union in Dublin, in the late 1920s. This portrait has as its subject his wife, Char-
lotte Hollingsworth, Florence’s mother. She makes an imposing figure against a muted, mountain-
ous background, but rather than projecting hauteur or distance, she has a notably benign, warm
presence, skillfully conveyed by the artist.
Brockhurst was celebrated as a society portrait painter from the early 1920s. From Edgebaston,
Birmingham, he was recognised as precociously gifted at drawing from an early age, even though
he was a poor student academically. His aptitude gained him early entry to art school. His self-por-
trait as an art student, painted when he was just 15, is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
Visiting France and Italy on a scholarship, he was much taken with the work of several Italian re-
naissance painters, including Botticelli and Piero della Francesca, influencing the classical poise
of his mature style.
While travelling he met, and married, Anaïs Melisande Folin and they spent most of the First World
War years in Ireland, including in Connemara, where he posed and painted Folin as Ireland per-
sonified. He also made portraits of others in Ireland including poet Francis McNamara and Aileen
Cox. The latter portrait, with graphic works he made in Ireland, is in the National Gallery of Ireland.
Back in London from 1919, he became a much sought-after portrait painter, and was also recog-
nised as a printmaker of brilliance. His capacity to lend his sitters film star aura, positioning them
skillfully lit against low horizon lines in almost photographic images, gained him many prestig-
ious sitters. His pre-eminence was only disrupted when his relationship with his model Kathleen
‘Dorette’ Woodward became front-page news and his marriage broke up. He and Woodward de-
camped to the United States, where he attracted another succession of well-known clients (Merle
Oberon, Marlene Dietrich, J Paul Getty among them). By the time of his death in 1978 he was,
though, largely neglected. A number of exhibitions and sales have revived interest in his work over
the last two decades.
Aiden Dunne, February 2020

65

66
56 JAMES DIXON
(1887-1970)
Padde Curragh Fishing on Camus More Bay
Oil on paper, 41 x 66cm (16 x 22’’)
Signed, inscribed ‘Padde Curragh Fishing on Camus More Bay Tory Island about 70
years ago when there was no gut or flies fishing going by James Dixon, 18.10.1966’.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

67
57 TOM CARR ARHA HRUA ARWS
(1909-1999)
Newcastle Beach
Oil on canvas, 34.5 x 50cm (13½ x 19¾’’)
Signed and dated (19)’47
Exhibited: Ulster Museum, Belfast, Arts Council of Northern Ireland,
Retrospective Exhibition 1983, Catalogue No.39.
€ 1,500 - 2,500

68
58 BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA RUA
(1932-2016)
The Big House
Oil on canvas, 88 x 73cm (34¾ x 28¾’’)
Signed; also inscribed with title and dated July (19)’92
Provenance: With Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast, 1992/93, where purchased by the present owners.
Literature: ‘Blackshaw’ edited by Eamonn Mallie, page 254, Plate 108; ‘Basil Blackshaw - Painter’ by
Brian Ferran, page 129, Plate 71.
€ 12,000 - 18,000
The early 1980s brought an artistic shift to the paintings of Basil Blackshaw. In ’83, following a period
spent in hospital, Blackshaw determined that he had lost the connection with his subject matter and
he set about trying to rekindle the joy which he had once found amongst his canvases. He began to
embark along a route that took him further from figural studies and nearer to the abstraction which
would later typify his work.
Two years later, a studio fire consumed everything but, as with the flames that remove old growth in a
forest, a space was cleared in which Blackshaw’s talent could grow afresh. From this point, Blackshaw
hurled himself along his new path. His models became colour, texture and shape. With each seemingly
hurried and spontaneous sweep of his brush, Blackshaw peeled away the exterior layers of his subject
matter and revealed its inner form. By doing this, Blackshaw encouraged an appreciation for his subject
which was devoid of association. His works sought an exploration of paint, movement and expression
and they strove to imprint an experience on the viewer as opposed to a static representational image.
As Blackshaw approached a new decade, he was influenced by the work of the neo-expressionists and
this further enhanced his pieces. Blackshaw’s canvases became awash with violent, rapid brushstrokes,
vivid, contrasting colours and distorted forms.
The culmination of these factors is evident in The Big House. As with his barn series of the previous year,
Blackshaw utilises a saturated colour palette in his approach to this building. The brash yellow arrests
the viewer, its strength intensified by the contrast of deep blue in the upper corner. White dashes to
the front subtly illustrate a gated entrance and this allows our mind to develop the structure beyond.
Presented with the bare minimum, sketched marks roughly delineate the house’s form allowing our
eye to skid and dash along the paint marks, creating a symphony of movement around a stationary
construction.
In such a manner, the viewer is immersed in the mind of the artist. We are enveloped in his brusque
nature and shown a starkly different world to the one that we are used to. The Big House is a bold and
unapologetic painting that beautifully holds its place in the progression of Blackshaw’s oeuvre. A paint-
er that refused to commit to any one style, The Big House immortalises a period in which Blackshaw’s
artistic voice could be likened to a bellow and is, consequently, a painting that cannot be ignored.
Helena Carlyle, February 2020
The proceeds of the sale of this painting are being generously donated to the Adsum Foundation,
a charity with the goal of investing money in people and communities in the developing world and in
particular Madagasgar.

69

70
Sheelagh and Terry Flanagan were a team that was at the heart of Irish visual culture for half a century,
although to see them purely as a couple is perhaps to simplify their roles and their individual achieve-
ments. For them, social life and family life overlapped with work and other activities, and the collection
of paintings and drawings gathered here combines to represent this fruitful interweaving.
Their day-to-day activities were, in many ways, very different. In her youth Sheelagh became an actress,
before taking on a courageous and determined role in the face of the violence of the Troubles, as a
leading figure in the Peace-Point group. Terry’s quiet and dogged pursuit of his vision as a painter in
his studios in Belfast and Donegal was by contrast very private, despite his collaborations with certain
friends and the involvement of his family.
They built up around them a remarkable circle of colleagues and friends who shared their enduring faith
in the importance of art and, more broadly, in the centrality of culture at a precarious time. In the early
days of their marriage they spent time with John and Roberta Hewitt and Alice Berger Hammerschlag.
Then a younger generation took shape; Brian Friel and David Hammond were close friends, while family
holidays were interspersed with visits from Seamus Heaney, Joan Trimble or Kenneth Jamison. Despite
the lively socialising, what seems to have been at the heart of these friendships was a shared dedication
for their work. Time spent with Heaney became inspiration for joint projects, such as the January God
studies included here. Even in the most relaxed days of summer there was still the need for a morning’s
painting before embarking on any other activities. These were, however, above all family holidays, with
Philip, Catherine and Tony, and it is not surprising that in these circumstances and immersed in these
places, their two older children became artists and Tony an archaeologist.
Terry had found early success as a painter. Only just out of Belfast College of Art his work was acquired
by the legendary Belfast collector Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl. He was the only Northern Irish painter Colin
Middleton picked out when asked by Michael Longley about his local contemporaries, commenting that
they were both ‘addicted to places’. One of the few Ulster painters of his generation to become widely
collected in Dublin, he became one of David Hendriks’ most popular gallery artists, with Tom Caldwell
showing his work regularly in Belfast from the 1970s.
T.P. and Sheelagh Flanagan with F.E. McWilliam at The Tate Gallery for the opening of the F.E.McWilliam sculpture
retrospective in 1989. (Photograph courtesy of the Flanagan Estate)
T.P. & SHEELAGH FLANAGAN, THEIR LIVES TOGETHER
A STUDIO COLLECTION (LOTS 59 - 74)

71
When the Shambles Gallery opened in Hillsborough, Sheelagh’s longstanding friendships with William Scott
and F.E. McWilliam, amongst others, led to some memorable exhibitions in its unique surroundings. By then
Philip Flanagan had returned to Northern Ireland from Camberwell College of Art and he brought the per-
spective of a practising artist to their exhibitions, although he credits his mother’s likeability and the trust
with which she was regarded by these artists for the ongoing success of the gallery. One might see in its
style and ambition a defiant and determined refusal to allow the political situation to define the Flanagans’
activities.
Sheelagh’s vivacity and confidence was a catalyst for many collectors who came to the Shambles and gradu-
ally the crucial role she played in Terry’s life as a painter became more defined. While Philip was often called
upon for an artist’s opinion of a particular work and also helped with practical studio issues, Sheelagh was
increasingly able to deal on his behalf with the distractions of people, business and other issues. She knew
his work and understood its context and demonstrated the aptness of her own instinct with regard to certain
paintings.
Their life together was divided between a number of places which all have a particular significance and
Sheelagh Flanagan’s collection of her husband’s work is full of these landmarks. The landscapes he paints
are not simply visual experiences, although they can have their starting point there. Underpinned by a clas-
sical approach to pictorial structure, they are shaped by experience and memory; the economy of means
that is a hallmark of Flanagan’s painting, the carefully considered and interrelated marks on the canvas or
the minimal interventions of watercolour on paper, seem calculated to allow the place to breathe, to avoid
definition and to provide space for the viewer to engage with the painting. The landscape is allowed its mys-
tery and becomes a signifier of shared histories and presences that are built up over centuries along with the
geological and physical accretions that formed their appearance.
T.P. Flanagan’s landscapes have been considered by some as an equivalent in paint for Seamus Heaney’s
words and often these paintings seem to carry the texture of ideas explored in conversations with friends
during long summer evenings in Donegal or at Belfast parties. For example, the highly autobiographical
Lissadell series emerged from Flanagan’s writings about his childhood there, an activity itself prompted by
encouragement from Seamus Heaney. Words again take a painting beyond straightforward description in
the series of Emigrant Letter watercolours, and a similar relationship of image to concept is at the heart of
the complex depiction of wrapped objects.
Flanagan often created compositions from multiple preparatory works, extrapolating from them to com-
press visual elements into a single image. His absorption in structural analysis is a dominant element within
some early paintings, such as View from St Mary’s, but this quickly became balanced with an enduring, evoc-
atively poetic quality. This nuance and restraint is demonstrated in his integration of the elegantly powerful
formal ideal of Castle Coole with the elusive light and structure of the Fermanagh landscape; Lough Erne is
one of those places that Flanagan has defined in paint for many who know it well. The artist’s familiarity with
certain places allowed him to construct a personal iconography that was both visually informative and also
imaginatively correct, a representation that satisfied the need for these paintings to embody all aspects of
the personal experience of a place.
One might wonder whether Flanagan was drawn to painting elements constantly in flux and impossible to
pin down, light, water, even air, because they forced him to go beyond visual description and to see a paint-
ing as a metaphor in which the paint surface and the act of painting itself become part of that metaphor. His
paintings are about many things, but at their heart is his honesty in transcribing the places he knew best and
his own experience of them, as well as his personal integrity as a painter and an integrity in the life that he
shared with Sheelagh.
Every work of Terry Flanagan’s has a place within a lifetime of painting. We know where a motif has been
seen, imagined and developed. We know the period of work in which it belongs, where it might belong
within a certain group; perhaps we even have a key to a work in a poem. The exhibitions in which his paint-
ings were included, the books in which they were discussed and reproduced, all this is known and available
to collectors, researchers and the curious. It is easy to underestimate how much time, understanding and
organisation goes into creating this detailed scholarly hinterland, as well as how much it can contribute to
the growth in interest and understanding of an artist. This was Sheelagh’s achievement, alongside her elder
son, the sculptor and painter Philip Flanagan, and also the curator and writer, and their close friend, Dr Brian
Kennedy.
Dickon Hall, February 2020

72
59 TERENCE P. FLANAGAN PRUA RHA
(1929-2011)
In a Garden
Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 76cm (19¾ x 30’’)
Signed twice; also signed and inscribed verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000
T.P. & SHEELAGH FLANAGAN, THEIR LIVES TOGETHER :
A STUDIO COLLECTION

73
(1929-2011)
View from St. Mary’s (1968)
Oil on board, 75 x 106cm (29½ x 41¾’’)
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gal-
lery, Dublin; Fermanagh County Museum, 1995/1996 (catalogue illustration, p.28).
Literature: S.B. Kennedy, T.P. Flanagan Painter of Light and Landscape, Lund Humphries,
2013; illustrated p.70.
€ 5,000 - 8,000
St Mary’s, the college where T.P. Flanagan taught for many years, is an unusual subject for
him, but this cityscape is a reminder that Flanagan lived and painted in Belfast throughout
his adult life, and also demonstrates his enduring interest in the structural arrangement of
a painting. The short horizontal shapes of the buildings in the middle distance balance the
verticals established by the two trees in the foreground, and the image is brought together
in a spatially compressed and interrelated composition by the mirroring of the geometric
shapes in the sky and the foreground.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

74
(1929-2011)
Estuary, Gortahork
Oil on board, 75.5 x 75.5cm (29¾ x 29¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin.
Exhibited: Across a Roaring Hill, Bonhams Dublin, 2015.
€ 3,000 - 5,000
A STUDIO COLLECTION

75
(1929-2011)
Islands, Lough Erne
Oil on board, 114 x 114cm (44¾ x 44¾’’)
€ 7,000 - 10,000
At various moments in his painting career T.P. Flanagan reduced the elements of a particular composi-
tion to a point close to abstraction but, however minimal the description of forms or the application of
paint, the visual image that was his starting point always remained at the heart of the work. In the pres-
ent painting the definite horizontal dashes of islands place the horizon precisely two thirds of the way up
the canvas and establish tensions with the irregular rocky foreground, substantial but indistinct, and the
illusory effects of light and water. Islands, Lough Erne was painted at the same period as An Ulster Elegy
and Flanagan’s Frozen Lake series, and the quiet minimalism of the painting evokes the complex mood
and broader implications of these works, without losing its direct response to the place that inspired it.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

76
(1929-2011)
Back Avenue, Lissadell
Mixed media on paper, 54 x 75cm (21¼ x 29½’’)
Signed
Provenance: With David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin.
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan: A Haunter of Demense and Ditch Back, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, 2010.
€ 2,000 - 3,000
Flanagan’s paintings of Lissadell exemplify his overlaying of visual images with a strongly literary imagina-
tion. It appears to have been a strong influence on Flanagan as a writer, both as a young man and later in life,
when Seamus Heaney urged him to write down his memories of the time he spent there in his youth.
Flanagan’s words eventually metamorphosed into drawings and paintings, and the viewer can sense in Back
Avenue, Lissadell the powerful moods remembered from childhood, the strong but elusive visual memories
and the dreamlike quality that Flanagan evokes in the path turning out of view and the woodland that is in-
viting yet impenetrable.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

77
(1929-2011)
Rowan in the Rain (1967)
Oil on canvas board 45 x 60cm (17¾ x 23½’’)
€ 6,000 - 8,000
Rowan in the Rain has many hallmarks of Flanagan’s paintings of water and the surrounding landscape. There
is a carefully balanced interplay between the intersecting shapes of water and land, muted tonal harmonies
that bring together the sky, water and land, and a sense of physical ambiguity in which land and even the
tree to the left seem as momentarily shifting and intangible as the water around them. The introduction of
the rowan trees, however, seem to bring into focus a specific moment and a memory to which the artist has
returned in the studio. They form a strongly organised pictorial unit and the fruit on the trees creates a col-
ourful abstract rhythm, while their traditional associations might perhaps be a reminder of mystical traditions
passed down locally.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

78
(1929-2011)
Roughra Hearth (IV) (1972-3)
Watercolour, 76 x 56cm (30 x 22’’)
Signed and inscribed with title
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin;
Fermanagh County Museum, 1995/1996; T.P. Flanagan: Painter of Light and Landscape, Taylor Gallery
Dublin, 2010.
€ 3,000 - 5,000
The Roughra Hearth series indicate Flanagan’s ability to locate an appropriate visual metaphor as a
meditation on ideas, in this case the role the hearth had traditionally played in Irish rural life and its
broader social and psychological significance, as well as Flanagan’s own awareness of the lives that had
preceded him in the cottage and their relationship with those of his own family. Roughra Hearth IV ab-
stracts the hearth itself, emphasising the slow staining of the turf fire, and balances it with the defined
elegance of the shears resting above it.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

79
(1929-2011)
Tree Line (Roughra)
Oil on canvas, 71 x 91cm (28 x 35¾’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed with title verso
€ 3,000 - 5,000
In 1968 the Flanagans acquired a cottage at Roughra in Donegal, to which a studio was subsequently added.
As the troubles intensified, the family began to spend more time there and away from Belfast and it became
a focal point for visitors such as Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Gordon Lambert, Derek Hill and F.E. McWilliam.
While Flanagan continued to work on a number of themes during these years, the landscape around Roughra
as well as the experience of living there and the cottage itself became increasingly important to him. While
many of the Roughra landscapes are restrained but have a sense of quiet drama, Tree Line, Roughra empha-
sises structure and the organisation of certain visual elements as Flanagan’s starting-point.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

80
(1929-2011)
A Rose Wrapped Up, Version I
Oil on board, 76 x 63cm (30 x 24¾’’)
Signed
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin;
Fermanagh County Museum, 1995/1996 (catalogue illustration, p.75); Correspondences, Ormeau Baths
Gallery, 2010, illustrated; T.P. Flanagan: A Haunter of Demense and Ditch Back, F.E. McWilliam Gallery,
Banbridge, 2010.
Literature: S.B. Kennedy, T.P. Flanagan Painter of Light and Landscape, Lund Humphries, 2013; illustrated
p.98.
€ 5,000 - 8,000
This apparent lyrical simplicity of this painting also carries more complex references across other series of
paintings by Flanagan, such as images of wrapped turf, while it has also been suggested that there might
be an emotional and visual connection with his seminal 1974 painting The Victim. It is similar in mood and
iconography to the Emigrant Letter series, each capturing moments of delicate beauty and poignancy while
subtly acknowledging the darker sources of inspiration. The resonance of objects and their associations was
significant for Flanagan and the juxtaposition of the rose and the bowl creates a dialogue within the painting
itself.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

81
(1929-2011)
Red Roses Wrapped Up
Oil on board, 75 x 62.5cm (29½ x 24½’’)
Signed
€ 4,000 - 6,000
A STUDIO COLLECTION

82
(1929-2011)
Lower Lough Erne, Autumn (1980)
Watercolour, 27 x 30.5cm (10½ x 12’’)
Signed
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery,
Dublin; Fermanagh County Museum, 1995/1996; Correspondences, Ormeau Baths Gallery,
2010; T.P. Flanagan: A Haunter of Demense and Ditch Back, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge,
2010.
€ 1,500 - 2,500
A STUDIO COLLECTION

83
(1929-2011)
A Green Thought
Watercolour, 106 x 78cm (41¾ x 30¾’’)
Signed
€ 2,000 - 3,000
A STUDIO COLLECTION

84
(1929-2011)
Lower Lough Erne (2005)
Watercolour, 33 x 42cm (13 x 16½’’)
Signed
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan: A Haunter of Demense and Ditch Back, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge,
2010.
€ 1,500 - 2,500
A STUDIO COLLECTION

85
(1929-2011)
Water Meadows, Belle Isle, Co. Fermanagh
Oil on canvas board, 49 x 59cm (19¼ x 23¼’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000
A STUDIO COLLECTION

86
(1929-2011)
Studies towards ‘January God’
A set of three, mixed media on paper, 75 x 55cm (29½ x 21¾’’)
Signed; together with a printed copy of Seamus Heaney’s ‘January God’, illustrated by T.P. Flana-
gan, published by Arts Council of Northern Ireland. (4)
Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery,
Dublin; Fermanagh County Museum, 1996, catalogue no.35 (reference to).
€ 2,000 - 3,000
T.P. Flanagan and Seamus Heaney were crucial creative presences in each other’s lives throughout
their enduring friendship, and in 1972 this took on a very practical form when the Arts Council of
Northern Ireland decided to make a poster to accompany Heaney’s poem January God, and com-
missioned Flanagan to make an image for it. The complex, ambiguous form that Flanagan evolved
seems to relate to natural forms, with a neo-romantic intensity that recalls Graham Sutherland, but
the crown of thorns has also been interpreted as a response towards the violence of the Troubles,
which was then at its most intense.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

87
(1929-2011)
Gortahork V
Oil on board, 82 x 113cm (32¼ x44½’’)
Signed
Exhibited: Correspondences, Ormeau Baths Gallery, 2010; T.P. Flanagan: A Haunter of Demense and
Ditch Back, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, 2010; T.P. Flanagan: Painter of Light and Landscape,
Taylor Galleries Dublin, 2010.
€ 5,000 - 7,000
The series of paintings Flanagan completed around Gortahork in the late 1960s are often considered his
most intensely dynamic works, but Gortahork V is a comparatively subdued example and the sweeping,
lyrical brushstrokes are gently evocative against the gradual tonal shifts through the receding landscape.
Within the Gortahork paintings Flanagan almost seems to be searching for a more gestural and less de-
scriptive approach to landscape, as well as an increasingly complex relationship between this pictorial
analysis and the viewer’s expectations, with marks often passing across different planes within the pic-
ture space and even between the land and the sky, as here in the left side of the present work, creating
a highly unified image.
A STUDIO COLLECTION

88
75 SANDRA BELL
(B.1954)
Centaur
Bronze, 49 x 19 x 49cm (19 x 7½ x 19”)
Edition 2 of 8
Provenance: With the Oriel Gallery,
Dublin.
€ 1,500 - 2,000
76 SANDRA BELL
(B.1954)
Two Figures
Bronze, 25cm high (9¾’’)
Edition 1/8; dated 2001
Signed with initials.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

89
77 JOHN BEHAN RHA
(B.1938)
Rugby Player - A Charge for the Line
Bronze, 18.5 x 20 x 41cm high (7 x 7½ x 16”)
Provenance: Hunt Museum, Limerick, John Behan Exhibition of Sculpture, 5th - 22nd
November 2009.
€ 2,000 - 4,000

90
78 BRIAN BALLARD RUA
(B.1943)
Grand Canal Dublin
Oil on canvas, 60 x 75cm (23½ x 29½’’)
Signed and dated 2002; also inscribed with title verso
€ 2,000 - 3,000

91
79 DONALD TESKEY RHA
(B.1956)
West Cork Landscape
Acrylic on board, 55 x 74cm (21¾ x 29’’)
Signed
€ 8,000 - 12,000

92
80 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA
(1916-2012)
Uccello (1999)
Aubusson tapestry, 154 x 230cm (60½ x 90½’’)
Signed and numbered 2/9; also signed, titled and inscribed on the Tapisserie d’Aubusson certif-
icate attached to the tapestry verso
Atelier René Duché ed.
€ 30,000 - 50,000
A beautifully simple and elegantly sophisticated tapestry by one of the most celebrated Irish
artists of the 20th century, as well known for his achievements in tapestry and the graphic arts
as for his painting. Jewel-like oranges appear in a cloud of greenery against a deep blue sky. Le
Brocquy, who initially studied chemistry with an eye to entering the family business, the Green-
mount Oil Company in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, harboured a passion for art. With his mother
Sybil’s encouragement, he set off to explore the possibility of pursuing an artistic career. He
studied by visiting the great European galleries and he proved to have tremendous natural facil-
ity as a painter, becoming a central figure in progressive cultural circles in 1940s Dublin.
He responded with enthusiasm when The Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers invited him, with other
distinguished artists, to design a tapestry in 1948. He was, though, less than satisfied with the
technique whereby skilled tapestry weavers took a painted cartoon and effectively made their
own copy of it. Rather, he warmed to the pre-Renaissance technique, as espoused by Jean
Lurçat, who he greatly admired, whereby the artist created a detailed, colour-coded, precisely
delineated template, which the weavers followed exactly. The weavers at Atelier Tabard at Au-
busson were the best practitioners of this method, and le Brocquy embarked on a long, fruitful
collaborative relationship with them at the Atelier René Duché.
Le Brocquy was particularly interested in the emotional power of colour, and tapestry, once his
intentions were followed to the letter, seemed to him to be the ideal medium for using colour
effectively and accurately. The immediate inspiration for his tapestry Uccello was a painting
he had long admired by the artist, one of three exceptional works based on The Battle of San
Romano. Paulo Uccello was enraptured by the power of perspective and le Brocquy appreciated
his mastery in the superbly poised, curiously abstracted arrangement of men, arms and horses
in the painting, but he was also particularly struck by “the recurrent emergence of oranges, ap-
pearing like small suns from their dark foliage.” He thought of this detail when, soon after he had
seen the Uccello, he was in the French frontier town of Menton in 1939, he noticed the oranges,
“unbelievably exotic, blazing from their small trees on the sidewalks.”
Aidan Dunne, February 2020.

93

94
(1916 - 2012)
Image of Samuel Beckett
Watercolour 61 x 46cm (24 x 18’’)
Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
€ 15,000 - 20,000
(1916-2012)
Untitled
Watercolour, 17 x 25cm (6¾ x 9¾’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

95
Le Brocquy’s interest in the human face began with a series of paintings in 1964/65 centred on the heads of ancestral figures
from Irish history such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett, Oliver Plunkett. He moved later to the giants of Irish Literature, James
Joyce, W. B Yeats and Samuel Beckett, which were a continuation, in many ways of those earlier heads, exploring the links be-
tween the historical and contemporary Irish identity central to each of these writers works.
Le Brocquy and Beckett had a long and enduring friendship and this works sits amongst numerous representations of him
painted between 1979 and 2015. This present work, painted in 1992, three years after Beckett’s own passing, strikes a more
poignant note. With his eyes closed, the lips drawn in a thin line and his aged face emerging from an almost non-existent white
background, le Brocquy creates an image of a ghostly, spectre-like form.
The head paintings, represent an attempt to get a sense of the individual, not as a complete entity but rather as fragments
from the bodies, from the people themselves. It is an essence of the figure, captured through, at times, quite minimal touches
of paint. As with all the head paintings Beckett is suspended, isolated within the white space of the artist’s sheet of paper. With
his eyes closed, mouth drawn, there is an air of silence and repose. The distinctive characteristics of Beckett’s features, par-
ticularly his deeply lined face, are wonderfully rendered in this watercolour by le Brocquy in the subtle blue and grey washes of
colour.
Niamh Corcoran, February 2020

96
83 CONOR WALTON
(B.1970)
Still life with Judgement XII
€ 3,000 - 5,000

97
84 JOHN BOYD
(B.1957)
The Gentle Art of Misconception
Oil on panel, 45.7 x 55.9cm (18 x 22’’)
Signed; also signed and inscribed verso
Provenance: Archeus Fine Art, London, label verso.
Exhibition: ‘The Rites of Man?’, Archeus Fine Art, September 2000.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

98
This drawing is one of a handful of surviving ex-
amples that show John Luke’s meticulous pro-
cess of squaring up his compositions for either
easel paintings or larger decorative murals. He
would first prepare small sketches, using sheets
from a sketchbook, of individual figures, build-
ings, etc., and when the final design was worked
out it was then divided into a grid. Each square
of this grid was then transferred onto a larger
canvas or primed wall. Luke learnt this process
of squaring up from his two principal teachers
– Ivor Beaumont at Belfast School of Art and
Henry Tonks at the Slade. Beaumont, who was
a member of the Society of Painters in Tempera,
encouraged Luke’s interest in mural techniques
(such as tempera and fresco) and engaged him
as an assistant in his own mural commissions in
Belfast. Tonks was one of the principal advo-
cates of mural painting in the inter-war years and
encouraged Luke to seek mural commissions in
London. This drawing of a circus arriving in a city
is not known to have been developed into an ea-
sel painting by Luke and it is more than likely a
design for a mural. It can be dated to the 1930s.
The frieze of elephants, giraffes, circus folk and
onlookers, enfolding like a mediaeval pageant
or an intricate Indian miniature, recalls the work
of Luke’s slightly older Slade contemporaries,
Mary Adshead and Rex Whistler, and also some-
thing of Luke’s older Irish contemporary Jack B.
Yeats who, like Luke, would return to the circus
as a theme throughout his career.
Joseph McBrinn, February 2020
85 JOHN LUKE RUA
(1906 -1975)
Untitled - Men at Work on a Boat
Pencil and wash, 44 x 67cm (17¼ x 26¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sale, these rooms, 3/7/2007,
lot 191, where purchased by the current
owner.
€ 2,000 - 3,000
86 JOHN LUKE RUA
(1906 -1975)
The Circus Comes to Town
Pencil and wash, 60 x 50cm (23½ x 19¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sale, these rooms, 25/3/2007,
lot 59a, where purchased by the current
owner.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

99

100
87 BASIL IVAN RÁKÓCZI
(1908-1979)
The Harlequin and the Bear
Oil on board, 60 x 50cm (23½ x 19¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: The artist’s family; thence by
descent.
€ 1,200 - 1,600

101
88 HARRY KERNOFF RHA
(1900-1974)
St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Summer
Watercolour, 25.5 x 31cm (10 x 12¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sale, these rooms, 31/3/2004, lot no. 43
where purchased by the current owner.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

102
89 COLIN MIDDLETON RHA RUA MBE
(1910-1983)
Birth of David
Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 61cm (19¾ x 24’’)
Signed; dated verso 4 July 1944
Exhibited: ‘An Exhibition of Recent Works by Colin Middleton’, CEMA Northern Ireland, 1945-46, catalogue
number 6; Associated American Artists, New York, 1947, label verso.
Literature: James White, ‘Irish Painters of Today’, The Studio, March 1950, illustrated.
€ 20,000 - 30,000
Birth of David was painted in the summer of 1944 during a successful and fertile period for Colin Middleton.
In 1943 he had held an ambitious and generally well-received solo exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art
Gallery and in 1945 his first exhibition in Dublin took place several months before another one man show
in Belfast, with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, in which the present painting was
included.
The 1945 Belfast exhibition largely maintained the uplifting tone of personal and philosophical integration
with which the 1943 exhibition concluded. With its fine draughtsmanship and extensive use of symbolism
Birth of David might seem to continue Middleton’s earlier surrealism, but its intense mysticism and the in-
terest in the Old Testament demonstrated in the subject matter, also look forward to the period from 1948
when he worked with Victor Waddington. Its symbolism appears more esoteric and less related to Middle-
ton’s own life and artistic identity than many works in the 1943 exhibition and, alongside the references to
the life of King David, it is tempting to wonder whether the Star of David was also intended as a reference to
the experience of the Jews in Europe in the pre-war and wartime years.
It is possible that Birth of David was included in an exhibition of contemporary Irish painting held in New
York in 1947 at the Associated American Artists gallery, although this was before Middleton began exhibit-
ing with Victor Waddington, who seems to have been connected with the exhibition. Waddington’s interest
in the painting is demonstrated by its use as an illustration in James White’s 1950 article on contemporary
Irish art in The Studio magazine. While Middleton questioned Waddington over his decision to provide
White with this image, as well as criticising White’s description of him as a surrealist, he remained commit-
ted to the painting. ‘I do not in any way repudiate that canvas. It was a very important one in its period for in
it, as in others of that time, I was endeavouring to come to terms with the pathological nature of mysticism.’
[1] Letter from Colin Middleton to Victor Waddington, 6th March 1950 (Private Collection)
Dickon Hall, February 2020.

103

104
90 SIR JACOB EPSTEIN
(1880-1959)
Betty Peters, reclining bust
Bronze, 21cm high (8¼’’)
€ 3,000 - 5,000

105
91 GERARD DILLON
(1916-1971)
Face in the Sky
Watercolour, 26 x 36cm (10¼ x 14¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: George and Maura McClelland Collection.
€ 6,000 - 9,000

106
92 FRANK EGGINTON
RCA FIAL
(1908-1990)
The Road to the Sally Gap
(14¼ x 20¾’’)
Signed
€ 600 - 800
93 MILDRED ANNE
BUTLER RWS
(1858-1941)
Mountainous Landscape
(10½ x 14½’’)
Provenance: Kilmurry
Studio Sale 1981, con-
ducted by McCreery
Auctioneers, Kilkenny,
where purchased by
David Ryan; sold Whyte’s,
Dublin 17/9/2002, lot 56.
€ 500 - 700

107
94 MILDRED ANNE BUTLER RWS
(1858-1941)
Harvesting
Watercolour, 11.5 x 17.5cm (4½ x 6¾’’)
€ 2,000 - 3,000

108
96 ERSKINE NICOL RSA ARA
(1825-1904)
Irish Faction Fighter Dragging his Coat,
Initiating a Fight
Oil on panel, 28 x 22.5cm (11 x 9”)
€ 1,500 - 2,500
95 CHARLES HENRY COOK
(1830 - 1906)
The Broken Club
Oil on canvas, 41 x 30.5cm (16 x 12’’)
Signed
€ 1,000 - 1,500

109
98 JOSEPH WILLIAM CAREY RUA
(1859-1937)
Animated View of Poolbeg Light-
house, with the Dublin Mountains and
Ships in the Background
Watercolour, 16 x 36.5cm (6.25 x
14.5”)
€ 500 - 600
97 EDWIN HAYES RHA RI ROI
(1819-1904)
Fishing Vessels Casting Off Tug Boats
Oil on board, 17.5 x 28cm (7 x 11”)
Signed, also signed and dated 1880 and inscribed with
title verso
Provenance: Collection of G. C. Hawes, the Manor
House, Shipham, Winscombe; Christie’s, London, 23
January 1914, lot 37 (stock number ‘180CF’, verso).
€ 1,500 - 2,000

110
99 STEPHEN CATTERSON SMITH RHA
(1806-1872)
Ace of Hearts
Oil on canvas, 59 x 35cm (23¼ x 13¾’’)
Signed
€ 1,500 - 2,000
100 GEORGE A. BRENAN
(FL.1869-1883)
A Sly Thief
Oil on board, 23 x 30.5cm (9 x 12”)
Titled and signed in red ‘A Sly Thief. / Geo
A. Brenan’, lower-left
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Acade-
my, 1882, no. 199, £5 5.
George A. Brenan was born in Dublin,
the younger brother of James Brenan,
RHA (1837-1907). George was a student of
the Cork School of Art and alongside his
classmate, Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895)
was awarded a medal in 1862. Living at 51,
Camden St., Brenan won first prize, a silver
medal, for a drawing from a nude living
model at the Royal Hibernian Academy in
1875. Brenan exhibited ‘A Sly Thief’ and
‘Recreation’ at the Royal Hibernian Acad-
emy in 1882, and ‘Mount St. Bernard Dog’
and ‘A Quiet Pipe’ at the Cork Industrial
Exhibition in 1883. In his 1913 Dictionary
of Irish Artists, Walter Strickland notes
that Brenan died soon after 1883.
€ 600 - 800

111
101 SIR MARTIN CREGAN PRHA
(1788-1870)
Portraits of Major H. Cornwall, Coldstream Guards, in Uniform and Alan Gardner Cornwall,
Aged Eighteen
A pair, oil on panel, 32 x 26cm (12½ x 10¼’’)
Inscribed verso
€ 2,000 - 4,000

112
103 GRACE HENRY HRHA
(1868-1953)
Boats in the Harbour, Mousehole
Charcoal, 33 x 23.5cm (13 x 9¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: With the Dawson Gallery,
Dublin. Collection of Antoinette & Patrick
J. Murphy.
€ 600 - 800
102 PAUL HENRY RHA
(1877-1958)
Sketch for a Portrait
Charcoal, 16 x 9.5cm (6¼ x 3¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With Jorgensen Fine Art,
label verso. Collection of Antoinette &
Patrick J. Murphy.
€ 300 - 500

113
105 GABRIEL HAYES
(1909-1978)
Portrait of a Young Boy - Believed to be
the Artist’s Son
Oil on board, 61 x 48.4cm (24 x 19’’)
€ 2,000 - 4,000
Hayes was taught by Sean Keating at the
Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, and
his influence is seen in the realist tradition
of this rare Co. Kildare artist’s work.
Aside from painting, Hayes designed the
new decimal coins in 1971 and was also
an accomplished sculptor. She is perhaps
best known for her bas relief panels on
the facade of the Department of Industry
& Commerce on Kildare Street in Dublin.
She was awarded the Oireachtas gold
medal for sculpture in 1977 and died in
Dublin on the 28th of October 1978.
104 FRANCES KELLY ARHA
(1908-2002)
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on canvas, 57 x 47.5cm (22½ x 18¾’’)
Signed
€ 1,000 - 1,500

114
106 PAUL HENRY RHA
(1877-1958)
Bogland, Kerry
Oil on canvas, 38 x 45.5cm (15 x 18’’)
Signed
Provenance: A private Dublin Collection
A feint inscription on the reverse of the canvas suggests that the title is ‘Bogland,
Kerry’ but the composition, freedom of brushwork and style certainly confirms
this suggestion and also suggests a likely date in the early to mid 1930s. The
work is very much in keeping with Henry’s work of this period and is aligned with
those works that Dr. S.B. Kennedy suggests are scenes in Co. Kerry - with simple
bogland compositions and vigorous brushstrokes.
The rapidly painted fleeting rainclouds that scamper across the open sky bring
vitality to the composition. The delicately modeled deep blue mountains
provide a sense of solidity to the work and the inky blackness of the turf stacks
grounds the composition, while the reflecting water in the foreground generates
much welcome lightness.
€ 40,000 - 60,000

115

116
(1911-1994)
Moonrise on the Lake
Oil on canvas, 65 x 92cm (25½ x 36¼’’)
Signed, with title verso
€ 15,000 - 20,000
In Patrick Collins: A View on Painting, broadcast on RTÉ in 1985, Collins speaks of how ‘The title is nearly
always a clue to a picture and it’s the only effort the artist can make to give you some literary statement that
helps you with a picture. It’s called something so therefore you look for something. It’s called ‘A Valley at
Sunset’ or ‘The Lakes of Killarney’, ‘A Street Scene’, ‘Still Life’. All these things will help you look for this. But
again there’s the contradiction. If you just look for what the title suggests, you’re going to miss the subtlety
of the picture which goes beyond that.’
Moonrise on the Lake conjures up a romantic, lyrical image but, as Collins himself, suggests it goes beyond
a rising moon and lakescape. Look for the lake, look for the moon and they are there but as Collins himself
observes the painting goes beyond that. It can be admired for what it is and for what it suggests. Asked, in
1973, about being called an abstract expressionist Collins replied ‘it’s true in a way. When I’m into a picture,
I’ll always forget the subject . . . . because it’s the whole flow that important’.
Moonrise on the Lake is both representational and abstract. What you see is what you get does not apply
here. The more you engage with this work, the more rewarding it is. Peter Murray says ‘The painting can
mean different things to different people, a vagueness Collins encouraged; his deliberate use of indistinct
forms, engulfed or surrounded by an almost tangible atmosphere, freed the art work from the specific and
the everyday’.
This composition features a grey-blue lake at night and in the distance, white and pale yellow bands of
light shine out against a darker background. But in Collins’s work colour is never a single colour. His pal-
ette brilliantly combines different colours and in this instance soft brushstrokes create a quiet movement
in the water. In the foreground the brighter, different shapes, the use of strong blacks and whites and the
block of colour, with its yellow, greens and reddish-orange give the paining a fine power. Is this the moon’s
reflection? Is it the artist going beyond that and celebrating form and colour? It is both. ‘You don’t believe
in the thing that you’re painting, you believe in the thing behind what you’re painting’ said Collins in 1985
Opening a Patrick Collins Exhibition in Cork in 1972, poet John Montague spoke of Collins’s work as ‘a dia-
logue in colour, a mystical experience of light, effecting a bedreamer vision of paint’. Oil paint and canvas,
‘[t]he old materials’, says Collins, ‘are very simple. Your paint, your canvas – it hasn’t begun to be exhausted.’
Collins always painted in artificial light but that never diminished the work. Moonrise on the Lake captures
a wonderful, quiet energy. The moon’s reflection glows bright, shines bright on a calm, muted lake.
In an Irish Times interview, 1973, he told Harriet Cooke: ‘I don’t think it matters a damn. A good play is
never better because it is put on in the open air. Plein air, al fresco, it doesn’t matter at all’ adding that ‘[a]rt
explains humanity; it’s outside nature. It’s a necessity, an impetus, a force.’
When Patrick Collins died, Aidan Dunne rightly recognised him as ‘one of the finest Irish painters of the
century and one of the select few to have contributed to an Irish artistic identity’.
Niall MacMonagle, February 2020

117

118
108 FELIM EGAN
(B.1952)
Woodnote bb (2003)
Mixed media on wood, 48 x 48cm (19 x
19’’)
Signed and dated ‘03 verso
€ 1,000 - 1,500
109 JOHN DOHERTY
(B.1949)
Road Series Study - Flyover 2
Acrylic wash on paper, 27 x 40cm (10½ x
15¾’’)
Dated 1980 verso
Exhibited: Taylor Galleries, Dublin 1981,
label verso.
€ 1,500 - 2,000

119
(1911-1994)
Foul Tide
Oil on board, 63 x 74cm (24¾ x 29’’)
Provenance: With Tom Caldwell Gallery, label verso.
€ 6,000 - 10,000

120
111 STELLA STEYN
(1907-1987)
Still Life with Jugs
Oil on canvas, 50 x 70cm (19¾ x 27½’’)
Provenance: With Thomson Roddick &
Medcalf, stamp verso.
€ 800 - 1,200

121
112 NANO REID
(1900-1981)
A Fire in the Open
Oil on board, 55.5 x 60.5cm (21¾ x 23¾’’)
Signed
Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, label verso.
Exhibited: ‘Contemporary Irish Painting’, Wexford Festival, Arts Council of Ireland, 1969.
€ 4,000 - 6,000

122
113 ESTELLA FRANCES SOLOMONS HRHA
(1882-1968)
Portrait of a Gentleman
Oil on canvas, 60 x 45cm (23½ x 17¾’’)
Exhibited: ‘Works from an Artist’s Studio’,
Crawford Gallery, Cork, 1986.
€ 1,000 - 1,500
(1882-1968)
Portrait of Ernest Boyd
60 x 50cm (23½ x 19¾’’)
Exhibited: ‘Works from an Artist’s Studio’,
Crawford Gallery, Cork, 1986.
€ 1,000 - 1,500

123
(1882-1968)
Portrait of Seamus O’Sullivan
Oil on canvas, 91 x 71cm (35¾ x 28’’)
Exhibited: ‘Works from an Artist’s Studio’, Crawford Gallery, Cork, 1986.
€ 2,000 - 3,000

124
116 TONY O’MALLEY HRHA
(1913-2003)
The Maudlins, New Ross
Mixed media on paper, 33 x 42cm (13 x 16½’’)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1957
Provenance: With The Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, label verso.
€ 1,500 - 2,000

125
117 DAVID CRONE RHA RUA
(B.1937)
Interior Landscape
Provenance: With Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast.
€ 2,000 - 4,000

126
118 SEAN SCULLY
(B.1945)
Munich Mirrors - A boxed portfolio of five aquatints
Aquatint and spitbite, sheet size 63 x 50cm (24¾ x 19¾’’); image size 34 x
24cm (13¼ x 9½’’)
Signed on colophon sheet and on image 5; all numbered 1/40, titled and
dated (20)’03
Printed on Zerkall Butten paper by Melissa Mayer Galbraith and Alexander
NuBlein, Munich. Germany
€ 15,000 - 20,000

127

128
119 BARRY CASTLE
(1935-2006)
Odysseus and the Sirens
Oil on board, 58.3 x 71cm (22¾ x 28’’)
Signed with initials and dated ‘74
Provenance: With The Frederick Gallery,
Dublin, Summer Show 2000.
€ 1,500 - 2,000
120 BARRY CASTLE
(1935-2006)
Oriental Woman and Sunflowers
Watercolour, 76 x 56.5cm (30 x 22¼’’)
Signed with initials and dated 2002
Provenance: With the Solomon Gallery,
Dublin.
€ 1,500 - 2,000

129
121 LIAM BELTON RHA
(B.1947)
Three Gourds
Oil on canvas, 50 x 40cm (19¾ x 15¾’’)
Signed
Exhibited: RHA Annual Exhibition.
Provenance: Collection of Antoinette & Patrick J. Murphy.
€ 2,500 - 3,500

130
122 BRIAN BALLARD RUA
(B.1943)
Vase with Flowers and
Bottles
Oil on canvas, 38 x 54cm
(15 x 21¼’’)
€ 700 - 1,000
123 PADRAIG
MACMIADHACHAIN
(1929-2017)
Moon over the Island,
Lanzarote
Oil on board, 32.5 x 40cm
(12¾ x 15¾’’)
Signed and dated (19)’65;
signed and inscribed
verso
€ 500 - 600

131
124 MARKEY ROBINSON
(1918-1999)
Cardiff Dock
Gouache on board, 50.8 x 99cm (20 x 39’’)
Exhibited: Dublin, George Gallery, Irish Paintings, May 1988.
Literature: Markey Robinson - A Life, The Retrospective by Susan Stairs,
Illustrated page 23.
€ 8,000 - 12,000

132
(1871-1957)
Hilary Pyle - Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue
Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, André
Deutsch, London 1992. Three volumes,
1856pp with 1822 illustrations, 111 in
colour. Cloth in a slipcase fine unopened
condition.
Definitive catalogue raisonné of Ireland’s
greatest painter, bringing together every
known oil painting by Yeats, providing
further documentary illustrations where
appropriate and citing all relevant sources
and influences. No. 844 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
126 SEÁN KEATING PRHA
(1889-1977)
Portrait of a Young Woman with Dark Hair
Mixed media, 50 x 36cm (19¾ x 14’’)
Signed
€ 800 - 1,200

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