WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 19 October 2020

72 46 May Guinness (1863-1955) SAN MALO FROM ST. SERVAN, c.1925 oil on canvas signed lower left; signed and titled on reverse; with original inscribed label also on reverse; with Museé de Pont-Aven exhibition label also on reverse 25.50 by 20in. (64.8 by 50.8cm) Frame size: 31 by 26in. (79 by 66cm.) Provenance: ****Collection Crawley & Asquith, London*** Adams, 11 December 1991; Private collection; Sotheby’s, 22 May 1997; Private collection; Dominic Winter, 6 February 2013, lot 482; Private collection Exhibited: ’May Guinness’, Galerie Visconti, Paris, January, 1925 as Quai de Saint-Servan; ’Peintres Irlandais en Bretagne’, Museé de Pont- Aven, 26 June to 29 September and Crawford Gallery, Cork, 1999, no. 8 Literature: Campbell, Julian, ‘Peintres Irlandais en Bretagne’, Museé de Pont-Aven, Brittany & Crawford Gallery, Cork, 1999, catalogue no. 8 (illustrated) May Guinness, born Mary Catherine Guinness, was part of a vanguard of Irish Modernists that included Eileen Gray and Mary Swanzy. She began exhibiting in 1892 with the Watercolour Society of Ireland, with whom she was to show more than 120 paintings over the next sixty years. Two years later in 1894 she travelled to the Cornish art colony of Newlyn, along with fellow watercolourist Mildred Anne Butler and it was there that her Modernist training began under the Impressionist Norman Garstin. After 1910 she studied in Paris under the Dutch-French Expressionist Kees Van Dongen whose radical use of colour was an influence. At the outbreak of WWI she became a military nurse for the French army and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. After the war (at the age of 59) she studied under leading Cubist master André Lhote overlapping slightly with Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. While in Paris she acquired works by Bonnard, Braque, Dufy, Matisse, Picasso, and Rouault where later in her Dublin ‘salon’ they became a resource for artists who wished to see examples of Parisian Modernism. In Dublin she encouraged younger artists to experiment with colour and form, whilst applying herself to various mediums including fresco painting and decorative needlework. She had an exhibition of her work at the St Stephens Green Gallery in 1922, and another ten years later at the Mills’ Hall in Merrion Row. She exhibited with the Dublin Painters and the IELA, as well as the Victor Waddington Galleries. A retrospective was held the year after her death at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin. The present work dates to her time with André Lhote (1922-25) and was executed three years after her painting A Religious Procession In Brittany (Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.1339) which was exhibited at May Guinness, Dublin Painters’ Society, May 1922 and in 1966 at the 1916 Jubilee Exhibition, Nenagh. Both works are characteristic of her Cubist style; the present example demonstrating a further confidence with its more restraint palette, flattened perspective and dynamic geometric shapes. Although an unpopulated view of a harbour, this painting shares similarities with the figurative works. A Religious Procession (NGI) and with Woman with Red Hair, illustrated. (Whyte’s 16 September 2019, lot 48, sold for €34,000, a record auction price for the artist). Each uses a subtle ‘frame within a frame’ technique to both draw the viewer in and simultaneously thrust forward the subject. Strong lines and diagonals cut through the composition creating movement but none of these works are devoid of smooth curved lines either as can be seen in the wave of the sail or the woman’s face and neck (illustrated) or the houses and procession flags in the NGI example. In each case too Guinness adds a playful dot motif, seen in the harbour scene on the quayside pavement, water and sky, in the mantilla style headdress of the Woman with Red Hair and beneath the feet of the young communicants in the NGI painting. San Malo from St. Servan was shown in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Galerie Visconti, Paris in January 1925 and 74 years later in ‘Peintres Irlandais en Bretagne’ at Museé de Pont- Aven and at the Crawford Gallery in Cork. €8,000-€12,000 (£7,110-£10,670 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot46 Whyte’s, 16 September 2019, lot 48, sold for €34,000, a record auction price for the artist.