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The McClelland Collection
46
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
SEASIDE FAIRGROUND, BRAY HEAD, 1949
watercolour on card
signed and dated lower left; with note in the artist’s hand on Gimpel Fils paper on reverse
6½ x 6in. (16.51 x 15.24cm)
Provenance:
Gimpel Fils Gallery, London;
Collection of George and Maura McClelland
Literature:
The Hunter Gatherer - The Collection of George and Maura McClelland, The Irish Museum of Modern Art,
Dublin, 2004, p. 90 as Gypsy Children at Play, 1949
Note verso reads:
‘Seaside Fairground’ [16.8 x 15.2cm]
This is a sketch of a fair at Bray Head made in 1949 from which I painted an oil (about 70 x 50cm) of the
same subject now owned by my wife Anne Madden.
Louis le Brocquy, London
25 / 4 / 1983
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.”
€6000-€8000 (£5130-£6840 approx.)
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