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136
LeoWhelan RHA (1892-1956)
OUR LADY QUEEN OF IRELAND, 1933
signed colour print
signed in pencil in the margin and signed in the plate lower right; with title printed lower centre and a
message from His Holiness, Pope Pius XI printed lower right and dated Sunday June 26, 1932
12¼ x 10¼in. (31.12 x 26.04cm)
In its original frame of M.H. Gill O’Connell Street Dublin.
The oil of Our Lady, Queen of Ireland was commissioned by the Gill family of Dublin - owners of the pub-
lishing company, which later became Gill and Macmillan. The model for Our Lady was Sarah (‘Sally’) Byrne
(later Deale), a student of Seán Keating’s at the College of Art and later a staff member there. Her portrait
was widely painted by her contemporaries at the time, including Keating whose son Justin was the mod-
el for the figure of the child in the present work. Justin later became a Labour Party minister in the 1970s
government of Liam Cosgrave.
In his article - Taking a politician unawares - for the Irish Times on June 16, 2012 Michael Parsons reflect-
ed on the artwork commissioned for the 31st International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin 80 years ago
and focused on the present work. Parson’s noted that, “According to the Catholic Bulletin, a framed print
[similar to the present example we can assume] was presented to Pope Pius XI in the Vatican in 1934 and
the artist was praised for depicting the “Madonna”, for the first time, with “Gaelic features”.
€150-€200 £126-£168
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