Whytes Important Irish Art 25 May 2015 - (click Date on Lot pages to add to your Calendar)

113

John B. Vallely (b.1941)

THE SESSION

oil on canvas

signed lower right

20 x 30in. (50.80 x 76.20cm)

John B. Vallely was born in Armagh in 1941 and is now the city’s most acclaimed resident artist, not to mention one

of Ireland’s most popular painters. In 1959 he enrolled at the Belfast College of Art, where he studied under the late

Tom Carr. Vallely went on to further study at Edinburgh Art College, and during hisearly years travelled widely in search

of subjects. However, his work has returned time and again to those local subjects that have most engaged him:

traditional Irish culture, in particular sport and music. Music and painting are inseparable concerns of Vallely’s. He is

a skilled musician himself and some forty years ago founded the Armagh Pipers Club, still in existence today. In the

words of Brian Ferran, “in their classic simplification Vallely’s paintings reach towards a greater universality and achieve

a mythological dimension which, for me, recalls something of the character of De Stael’s footballers and jazz musicians,

or paralleled perhaps in the great themes of Picasso’s harlequins and clowns, mythological in dimension but essentially

humanist” (introduction to Vallely’s exhibition in the CEMA Gallery, Belfast, 1966).

€ 8,000.00- € 10,000.00 (£5,970-£7,460 approx.)

This work will be among the highlights on view at Whyte’s Belfast preview, James Wray Gallery from 6pm to 8pm Thursday 14 May and 10am to 3pm on

Friday 15 May.

IMPORTANT IRISH ART ·