WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 28 NOVEMBER 2016

101

Hilary Heron (1923-1977)

A LEVEL HEADED MAN, c.1965

wood

56 by 29 by 16in. (142.24 by 73.66 by 40.64cm)

Provenance:

Purchased at the IELA Exhibition, 1965 by Micheál Mac Liammoir;

His sale, Allen & Townsend, 1980;

Where purchased by the present owner

Exhibited:

Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA), National College of Art, Dublin, 13 August to 11

September, 1965, catalogue no. 126 (illustrated)

Literature:

Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) 1965 catalogue (illustrated on front cover)

Hilary Heron was born in Dublin and spent her childhood in New Ross, County Wexford, and

Coleraine, County Derry. She was educated privately at home and at Ivory’s one-teacher

school in New Ross. She attended the National College of Art, Dublin, where she won three

Taylor Prizes from the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). For sculpture in wood, limestone and

marble she was awarded the first Mainie Jellett Memorial Travelling Scholarship in 1947. In

the same year, she went to Italy and France to study Romanesque carving. She was

instrumental in founding the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and first exhibited there in 1943.

With Louis Le Brocquy, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1956. In 1950 and

1953 she held two solo exhibtions in Dublin at the Waddington Gallery. In the 1950s she

began to work in metal.

In 1958 she was commissioned by the Irish government to complete work for an Irish exhibit

at New York, and in 1960 her first exhibition in England was shown at the Waddington

Galleries in London, where she displayed more than thirty works. One English critic saw her

work as assimilating exotic styles with a great feel for nature, remarking that ‘she brings

something fresh, diverting, and also very genuine to our inbred world of sculpture’ (Neville

Wallis, quoted in Snoddy, p. 253).

She travelled in Asia, America and Europe, and her works are in many private and public

collections, both in Ireland and overseas, including The Irish Museum of Modern Art.

€8,000-€12,000 (£7,270-£10,910 approx.)