60 / 244
The McClelland Collection
45
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
CHILDWITH DOLL, HOMMAGE À JANKEL ADLER, 1949
lithograph; (no. 6 from an edition of 20)
signed and numbered lower left
30½ x 20½in. (77.47 x 52.07cm)
Provenance:
Collection of George and Maura McClelland
The original watercolour and carbon drawing, Child with Doll, sold at Whyte’s, 28 April 2008, as lot 53.
Child with Doll was made in London in January 1949, at a crucial point in the development of Louis le
Brocquy’s art. Created between his celebrated Traveller paintings and the Grey Period works, of which A
Family, 1951 (National Gallery of Ireland), is the best-known example, Child with Doll includes elements
of both series. In form, the ragged toddler who trots along while embracing a smiling doll is reminiscent
of the Traveller children who hang on their mother’s skirts in paintings such as Tinkers Enter the City,
1947, and Tinkers Break Whitethorn, 1947. Yet in setting and theme Child with Doll presages many of the
Grey Period works. Like A Family, Child in a Yard, 1953 (Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane), and several of
the other paintings that le Brocquy exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1956, this image features a child
whose humanity is contrasted with its stark surroundings. Dating from the post-war period when atomic
catastrophe seemed a very real threat, these works combine the existential angst that dominated the
work of le Brocquy’s friend, Francis Bacon, with a humanistic celebration of the innocence of youth.
Writing in 1950, James White suggested that the toddler in Child with Doll was based on the figure of
a girl hugging a doll in The Fair at Bray Head, 1949 (see Lot 146). White wrote that, “the child became
... charged with a meaning of its own as a symbol of the lost children of Europe, wandering through a
cruel world with wonder and only half-understanding”. When it was recreated as a separate work (Child
with Doll), the doll remained with it, as a symbol of yet another future generation that these children
carry with them. In short, the child with doll is a parable of recurrent life, springing up through the ruins
as fireweed grows on the rubble of a bombed house”. (1) Le Brocquy has recalled how he heard of the
horrors of the Holocaust first hand from his friend, the French-Jewish art dealer Charles Gimpel. Both the
Traveller series and the stark interiors of the Grey Period works have been related to the multitudes of
refugees displaced during WorldWar II and its aftermath. (2) The connections between Child with Doll
and the horrors of war are strengthened by an inscription on the verso of the original work which reads
Homage À Jankel Adler.
Born in 1895 into an Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, Adler made his home in Germany until
the rise of National Socialism forced him to flee, firstly to France, and then to London. Adler, whom le
Brocquy met in London in 1947, soon became both a friend and an inspiration to the young Irish artist.
Throughout his long and fruitful career, Louis le Brocquy often acknowledged his artistic influences
by creating hommages to their work. While his last shows in Dublin and London included hommages
to Velazquez, Goya, Manet and Cezanne, Child with Doll is both one of his earliest hommages and a
transitional work that lies at an important crossroads between the Irish orbit of the Travellers and the
international arena of the Grey Period.
Dr Riann Coulter
1 James White, ‘Contemporary Irish Artists (VI): Louis le Brocquy’, Envoy, vol. 2, no. 6, Dublin, May 6, 1950,
p. 59.
2 See for example Yvonne Scott, Louis le Brocquy Allegory and Legend, exhibition catalogue Hunt
Museum, Limerick, 2006, p. 24
€2000-€3000 (£1710-£2560 approx.)