WHYTE'S IRISH ART 28 MAY 2018

IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 28 MAY 2018 AT 6PM 77 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) PORTRAIT OF JAMES JOYCE, 1982 watercolour signed, titled, dated and with artist’s archival number [ W 682 B ] on reverse 24 by 18in. (61 by 45.7cm) Provenance: with the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 1988; Gifted by Paul Hewson (Bono) to the present owner, June 1994 For an image of the reverse of the artwork click link below. According to Anne Crookshank: ‘le Brocquy has always been a great practitioner of watercolour and the thin wash- es of his early oils have much in common with this method. But… [h]is watercolours have taken on a new value. The irregular dabs of brilliant colour, purple, blue, and green, as non-descriptive as the tesserae of a Byzantine mosaic, build up the form of his heads with a tense, nervous immediacy which oil with its overlapping layers and opaque thickness never can achieve. The traces of paper left between each stroke, which enhance the brilliancy of the colours, and the gleam of whiteness, which glows through the paint, all help to create the truly magical effect of images coagulating in front of your eyes, coming alive, mediating, speaking, and ultimately returning to their own imaginative genius. He sometimes uses tissue paper to paint from, using it in such a way that the creases make caesuras in the strokes of paint. The results are deliberately induced accidents which help to keep the images at a distance from us, to give them reality only as paintings, not as descriptive portraits ... The magic of the quiet- ness of le Brocquy’s oils is surpassed only by the excitement of his watercolours. They may be as still as the oils. But the sheer joy of their running, smudged, fragmented, clear colours brings vital reality to the spirit of his rediscov- ered genius. In this aspect of his work, le Brocquy has added a new dimension to his art. He has become a great colourist.’ ... €15,000-€20,000 (£13,160-£17,540 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 77