WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART MONDAY 27 MAY 2019 AT 6PM

19 Lilian Lucy Davidson ARHA (1893-1954) POTATO HARVEST, 1931 oil on canvas signed in monogram lower left 30 by 40in. (76.2 by 101.6cm) Provenance: Morgan’s Auctions, Contents of The Cairn, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, 1986; Private collection Exhibited: RHA Annual Exhibition,1931, Dublin, catalogue no. 148 Davidson earned a reputation as an empathetic, naturalistic artist. She was prolific and proficient across a range of media: painting, book illustration, poster design, and set design for theatre. But there is nothing in Irish visual culture to compare with her 1946 Gorta (Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum). All narrative is eliminated, yet, as an invocation of the Great Famine, its subject is indisputable. Her Famine family has lost everything. The restricted palette intensifies the inconsolable grief. Traumatized, as they bury their child, they look past one another into nothingness. Its echoes are of the European tradition - artists who engaged with the dark side of the landscape. Davidson’s 1931 prequel, The Potato Harvest, is also the story of Irish peasant reliance on the potato for survival, but, in this instance, a more benign stage in the cycles of nature is depicted. This image of industriousness, community spirit and abundance, shows Davidson’s knowledge of historical, and contemporary, Irish and European art and artists (indeed, she exhibited in Paris, London, Amsterdam and the US). In her early years, Davidson was influenced by Stanhope Forbes whose heightened palette, square-brush technique and strong impasto highlights became characteristics of her style, traces of Paul Henry can be seen in her compositions, while the influence of Jack B. Yeats is evident in her subject choices and her fascination with rural life. She executed many harvest scenes, this painting, for example, is on a direct continuum with her Flax Pullers, both in composition and subject. Ultimately, The Potato Harvest is reminiscent of Jean-François Millet’s Sower and Gleaners. Legs akimbo, backs bent, it’s all in the rhythmic action, the bending and pulling. The deep ochres and umbers, the rough textures of sacking and wool, flax and hay, the steep incline, the strong diagonal pull, result in a painting richly expressive of the continuities of Irish rural life. Of Davidson’s 1926 exhibition, The Irish Times noted “a strong individuality in her painting” (November 3, 1926); reviewing her 1934 exhibition, it declared that “[s]he has vision, and crude and rude, as some of her subjects may be, out of every human sympathy with the humblest she composes scenes of life and interest” (February 6, 1934); and of her 1940 exhibition, it observed that “[h]uman sympathy is an elemental urge in her outlook” (November 4, 1940). Professor Emerita Niamh O’Sullivan, April 2019. €30,000-€40,000 (£25,860-£34,480 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 19