84
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
115
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
INTERIOR STUDY OF HEAD, 1972
oil on canvas
signed, inscribed [“Lars from Louis”] and dated lower right;
signed, titled and dated again on reverse; numbered [306] on
reverse; also with Oriel Gallery label on reverse
16
by 19in. (40.64 by 48.26cm)
Provenance:
Christie’s, 17 May 2002, lot 103;
Private collection;
with the Oriel Gallery, Dublin;
Private collection
Exhibited:
‘
Louis le Brocquy’, St-Paul, Foundation Maeght, 1973, no. 37
Literature:
(
Ed.) Lowry, Bernadette,
Faces in Times
,
Oriel Gallery, Dublin /
Nicholson & Bass Ltd., Belfast, 2004, p. 6 (illustrated)
A copy of the Oriel Gallery publication accompanies this lot.
The head image is recognised as one of the major themes in the work of
Louis le Brocquy (1916–2012).The series emerged following a visit, in
the winter of 1964, to the anthropological museum in Paris, the Musée
de l’Homme, where he came across the collection of Polynesian skulls,
partly reconstructed with plaster, decorated with painted marks and
with cowrie shells for eyes. Le Brocquy had been experiencing a
particularly difficult period as an artist and, dissatisfied with the
direction of his work which he felt was facile and aimless, he destroyed
much of the year’s output.
The heads resonated with him, however, as he responded to their
ritualistic symbolism, triggering his own series of profound images
addressing a number of related themes within the overall concept.
These were initiated with the
ancestral heads
series that reflected his
perspective of Celtic ethnography. He explained: ‘Like the Celts I tend to
regard the head as this magic box containing the spirit. Enter that box,
enter behind the billowing curtain of the face, and you have the whole
landscape of the spirit’.This comment reveals the artist’s fundamental
interpretation of humanity and the role of the heads in his work.
He developed his series to include images of famous writers and artists,
such as James Joyce,WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon.While
many of the subjects, whether of posthumous or living individuals, are
identifiable from photographs or other artworks, the theme is less about
their surface features than the workings of imagination and creativity.
Others in the series are not specific individuals and therefore, stripped
of their direct references to known personalities, give full focus to the
conditions and processes of the mind, as in
Interior Study of Head.
This was painted in the early 1970s, when this theme was well
established in the artist’s oeuvre. It conforms to the general colouration
of the series – of muted tones against shades of white – and in terms of
composition, with a single head against a plain background, it evinces le
Brocquy’s empathy with the poignant isolation of the individual.
However,
Interior Study of Head
represents an unusual approach in that
it is more explicitly about the inner person.With facial features reduced
to a minimum or obliterated entirely, the viewer is drawn into a sense of
human psychology, and its intellectual, emotional, and creative
dimensions.While the organic forms and colours across the surface of
the bones of the head suggest something of the tissue and nerve
structures that support mental activity, the fragmentary nature of the
execution is less about materiality than elusive traces. Le Brocquy
explained this well in an interview with George Morgan that is
particularly apt for this work:
Clearly it is not possible to paint the spirit.You cannot paint
consciousness.You start with the knowledge we all have that the most
significant human reality lies beneath material appearance. So, in order
to recognise this, to touch this as a painter, I try to paint the head image
from the inside out, as it were, working in layers or planes, implying a
certain flickering transparency […]
[
Pierre le Brocquy (ed) and George Morgan (1986),
Louis le Brocquy:
The Head Image
,
Gandon Editions, Cork, p.12. ]
Dr Yvonne Scott
November 2012
€
25,000-
€
35,000 (
£20,000-£28,000 approx)