WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
59
75
Deborah Brown HRUA (
b.
1927)
MAN SEA AND SKY, c.1951-1953
oil on board
signed lower right; titled on original label on
reverse
18 by 22in. (46 by 56cm)
Provenance:
Collection of Vincent Ferguson;
Whyte’s, 18 November 2003, lot 63;
Private collection
Painted circa 1951-1953,
Man Sea and Sky
is an
extremely early example of Deborah Brown’s work,
predating her move into abstract painting and later
sculpture. Born in Belfast, she enrolled at the Belfast
College of Art in 1946, spending only twelve
months there before switching to the National
College of Art in Dublin. Upon completing her
formal studies in 1950 she went to Paris for a year,
absorbing the lessons of the Old Masters whilst
simultaneously stimulated by contemporary trends
in art. Upon returning to Belfast in 1951 she met
with great success when the Arts Council of
Northern Ireland gave her a solo show in their
gallery at Donegall Place. Anne Crookshank has
noted of Brown’s work of this period: “her painting
was still realist, if already notably simplified, and
great attention was focused on the forms created
by the brushstrokes”.
1
In this sense it was typical of much of the best work
being produced in Belfast at the time by artists such
as Basil Blackshaw and T. P. Flanagan, who in turn
were influenced by the slightly older generation of
artists who had styled themselves in the thirties as
the Ulster Unit. Indeed,
Man Sea and Sky
bears
comparison with both Blackshaw’s similarly titled
Men, Sea and Moon
of 1952, and with Daniel O’Neill
and Colin Middleton’s work of the late forties and
early fifties in which figures are pressed up close to
the picture plane and brooding dark colours lend
the scenes a poetic romanticism.
1
Deborah Brown: A Selected Exhibition of Works
Completed Between 1947-1982
, Arts Council of Northern
Ireland, Belfast, 1982, unpaginated
€
1,200-
€
1,500 (£990-£1,240 approx.)
76
Anne Yeats (1919-2001)
THEATRE SCENE
oil on canvas
14 by 12in. (36 by 30cm)
€
800-
€
1,000 (£660-£830 approx.)
