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36
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
48
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
CHILD WITH DOLL, HOMMAGE À JANKEL ADLER, 1949
lithograph (from an edition of 20)
inscribed on reverse with mounting instructions in the
artist’s hand, unnumbered and not signed. Probably an
artist’s proof.
The edition numbered twenty plus artist’s proofs.
30.5 by 20.5in. (77.47 by 52.07cm)
The original watercolour and carbon drawing, Child With Doll,
sold at Whyte’s, 28 April 2008, as lot 53. Child With Doll was
made in London in January 1949, at a crucial point in the
development of Louis le Brocquy’s art. Created between his
celebrated Traveller paintings and the Grey Period works, of
which A Family, 1951 (National Gallery of Ireland), is the best-
known example, Child with Doll includes elements of both
series. In form, the ragged toddler who trots along while
embracing a smiling doll is reminiscent of the Traveller children
who hang on their mother’s skirts in paintings such as Tinkers
Enter the City, 1947, and Tinkers Break Whitethorn, 1947.Yet in
setting and theme Child with Doll presages many of the Grey
Period works. Like A Family, Child in a Yard, 1953 (Dublin City
Gallery:TheHugh Lane), and several of the other paintings that
le Brocquy exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1956, this image
features a child whose humanity is contrasted with its stark
surroundings. Dating from the post-war period when atomic
catastrophe seemed a very real threat, these works combine the
existential angst that dominated the work of le Brocquy’s friend,
Francis Bacon, with a humanistic celebration of the innocence of
youth.Writing in 1950, James White suggested that the toddler
in Child with Doll was based on the figure of a girl hugging a
doll in The Fair at Bray Head, 1949.White wrote that the child
became “... charged with a meaning of its own as a symbol of
the lost children of Europe, wandering through a cruel world
with wonder and only half-understanding.When it was
recreated as a separate work (Child with Doll), the doll remained
with it, as a symbol of yet another future generation that these
children carry with them. In short, the child with doll is a parable
of recurrent life, springing up through the ruins as fireweed
grows on the rubble of a bombed house”.
1
Le Brocquy has
recalled how he heard of the horrors of the Holocaust first hand
from his friend, the French–Jewish art dealer Charles Gimpel.
Both the Traveller series and the stark interiors of the Grey
Period works have been related to the multitudes of refugees
displaced during World War II and its aftermath.
2
The
connections between Child with Doll and the horrors of war are
strengthened by an inscription on the verso of the original work
which reads Homage À Jankel Adler. Born in 1895 into an
Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, Adler made his home in
Germany until the rise of National Socialism forced him to flee,
firstly to France, and then to London. Adler, whom le Brocquy
met in London in 1947, soon became both a friend and an
inspiration to the young Irish artist.Throughout his long and
fruitful career, Louis le Brocquy often acknowledged his artistic
influences by creating hommages to their work.While his last
shows in Dublin and London included hommages to Velazquez,
Goya, Manet and Cezanne, Child with Doll is both one of his
earliest hommages and a transitional work that lies at an
important crossroads between the Irish orbit of the Travellers
and the international arena of the Grey Period.
Dr Riann Coulter
1
James White, ‘Contemporary Irish Artists (VI): Louis le Brocquy’, Envoy,
vol. 2, no. 6, Dublin, May 6, 1950, p. 59.
2
See for example Yvonne Scott, Louis le Brocquy Allegory and Legend,
exhib. cat. Hunt Museum, Limerick, 2006, p. 24.
€
2,000-
€
3,000 (£1,600-£2,400 approx)