WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

98 61 Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) CAT IN THE CANE CHAIR oil on board signed lower right; titled on reverse; also with Dawson Gallery label on reverse 12.25 by 6.25in. (31.1 by 15.9cm) Frame Size: 17.25 by 11.25in. (43.8 by 28.6cm) Condition: This work appears to be in excellent condition. Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin, 1972; Private collection; Christie’s, 14 May 2004, lot 147; Private collection; Adam’s, 14 October 2009, lot 75; Private collection Exhibited: A similar image to this was used for an illustration in ‘Connemara is Ireland to Me’ written and illustrated by Gerard Dillon in ‘Ireland of the Welcomes’, Volume 13, no. 2, July to August 1964, published by the Irish Tourist Board The artist creates a trio of images, all carefully contrived in a Connemara interior, which is probably Inishlacken where he and other artist friends - including George Campbell and Arthur Armstrong - spent some time, and which, for a period, he shared with Nano Reid producing works for Victor Waddington’s Gallery in Dublin. The island is just off the mainland village of Roundstone. One of the more memorable sights of my childhood in Roundstone is these artists being waved off, with their supplies in a currach, after long liquifacious sessions in O’Dowds and Connolly’s public houses. My parents, other artists and the locals all happily consigned them to the ‘vasty deep’..well the few minutes it took one of the de Courceys or Woods to ferry them into the island. This is an important work as it is possibly an early portrait of the artist Noreen Rice (1936-2015) who was his great friend and whom he’d guided in the field of painting. Both of them were members of the ‘Belfast Group’ of artists. The second image within the work is the landscape seen through the curtained window of the mainland. The third and possibly the most important detail is the cat asleep in the cane chair. This is the cane chair in the artist’s major work “ The Yellow Bungalow”( Ulster Museum) which is now acknowledged as one of his most iconic paintings. The scene is set in a little house on the edge of Roundstone Village, in the sloping road to the Franciscan Monastery of Roundstone. The chair is hosting the same sleeping cat of “The Yellow Bungalow”work, albeit on a different cushion. In terms of the painter’s timeline this is a significant addition to the artist’s known œuvre and one which is an important marker in the artist’s evolution of that period in Roundstone and Connemara. Ciarán MacGonigal, November 2019 €12,000-€15,000 (£10,670-£13,330 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot61