WHYTE'S in association with CHRISTIE'S - The Ernie O'Malley Collection MONDAY 25 November 2019

56 A man reclines in a railway carriage. His head rests on his hand in a pose of melancholia, familiar from 17th and 18th century painting and tomb effigies of the 16th and 17th centuries. Those displaying signs of melancholia were believed to be suffering from not only emotional and physical imbalance but one in which they were out of alignment with the cosmos. Artists suffered more acutely from melancholia as the act of creating made them keenly aware of the transience of life. Ernie O’Malley, who acquired this painting from Jack Yeats in 1945, wrote of how ‘the shifting scene’ in his work is ‘temperamental and induces mood’. ‘Land can become sogged with persistent rain; it is then more than ever a burden and a heart-breaking task to work, or to brood a melancholy in the mind. With shafted light after the rain comes a lyrical mood in which tender greens vibrate in tones, whins crash with yellow glory and atmosphere is radiant’. (1) The green blue waterlogged land, visible through the window, creates a poignant backdrop. By contrast, the interior of the carriage is made of deep reds and oranges, suggesting its polished wood and upholstered décor. Its warm tones evoke a womb-like environment in which the traveller can reflect. While advertisements are visible on the rail above him they are subsumed into the overall atmosphere of the space. Yeats travelled by rail across Ireland extensively throughout his career. It is a major subject in his paintings and in his writings. It provided the perfect trope for juxtaposing an uncultivated world with that of the modernity of modern transport. As in Evening in Sligo, another work that belonged to O’Malley, the view through the window can be read as symbolic of the figure’s thoughts and imagination. The train provides a contemporary manner of experiencing the landscape, at one step removed and yet in this case allowing private contemplation. O’Malley shared Yeats’ reverence for the Irish countryside and had many memories of travelling through it as a young commander during the War of Independence and the Civil War. Dr Róisín Kennedy September 2019 1 . Ernie O’Malley, ‘Introduction’, Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition Catalogue, National College of Art (Dublin, June-July 1945). €500,000-€700,000 (£438,600-£614,040 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 25