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Tony O’Malley HRHA (1913-2003)
IRISH INSCAPE - STUDIO, PHYSICIANSTOWN, CALLAN, 1984
oil on wood with collage element
signed with initials lower left; dated [November] lower right; signed
again, titled and dated on reverse; also with artist’s archival number [No.
832] on reverse; with typed Taylor Galleries exhibition label on reverse
48 by 36in. (121.92 by 91.44cm)
Provenance:
Taylor Galleries, Dublin
Exhibited:
’Tony O’Malley’, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, October 1986, catalogue no. 18
After many years in Cornwall Tony O’Malley began extensive visits back to
Ireland in the late 1970s, establishing a studio at Physicanstown, near to
Callan Co. Kilkenny where he was born. This, like his studios in the
Bahamas and St. Ives, often formed the subject of his paintings. The work
is not a representation of an actual location but an ‘inscape’. This word,
which recurs in a number of O’Malley’s titles, comes from the writings of
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Inscape is a term used to describe ‘individually-
distinctive beauty’ or in visual art terms an interior landscape, a poetic
evocation of the artist’s thoughts and responses to a place or object rather
than a conventional outward view. O’Malley’s introspective practice came
from his early isolation as a self-trained artist but it was also informed by
his years of working with English modernist artists in Cornwall. Through
the St. Ives school he developed a sophisticated understanding and
engagement with modern art which is refected in the distinctive
language of forms found in this work.
The pale blue of the painting contained within a darker blue frame
suggests space and light. But the seeming simplicity of the blue expanse
and its foating birdlike forms is disrupted by its rich, three dimensional
surface. As in his other work O’Malley adds material to his paint to create
thick lines that project up from the surface. Elsewhere paint is scraped
back so that the underlying board is visible. The resulting rhythmic lines
compliment the painted foating grid of colourful forms. The simple and
direct treatment of the work in conjunction with its exotic elements and
colours evoke a primitive space while its marked surface anchors it within
the physical world of the artist’s studio.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
April 2012
We are grateful to the Taylor Galleries for their assistance in cataloguing
this lot.
€20,000-€30,000 (£16,393-£24,590 approx).
The Jim O’Driscoll Collection WHYTESS I N C E 1 7 8 3
,