WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 22 MARCH 2021 AT 6PM

88 63 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) DOVES, 1993-4 oil on canvas signed, dated and numbered [629] on reverse; also with Grants Fine Art Gallery label on reverse 15 by 18in. (38.1 by 45.7cm) Frame Dimensions: 23 by 26.5in. (58.4 by 67.3cm) This work appears to be in excellent condition. Provenance: Grants Fine Art Gallery, Newcastle, Co. Down; Private collection No. 629 in the artist’s oeuvre. The early paintings of fantail pigeons including Dove at Casa Rezillo, Fogio-Ischia (1956), and Male Dove (1956), are prompted by a memorable visit to Italy. Anne Madden recounts, ’The casa Pezzoli was a charming, whitewashed peasant house. In its courtyard a flock of white doves was fed by Louis. He was drawn to the intense life of these birds and made sketches from which a series of small oil paintings emerged. He was to return to this subject many years later in France, where our own fantail pigeons flew, turning and tumbling above their native valley, returning at nightfall to their home- made dovecote’. Inspired by the cornucopia of life at Les Combes - their French Riviera home near Nice - the artist embarked on an ongoing series of life and still-life paintings. In 1981 the artist turned to nature. Dorothy Walker writes, ’… in his paintings of doves or fantailed white pigeons their fluttery featheriness is transmuted into fluttery white paint not by attempting any realistic reproduction of a dove but by means of an image having its own inherent reality. Even in his paintings of goldfish, le Brocquy has created a more intense reality than one could imagine emanating from that somewhat cool customer.’ 1 1 https://www.anne-madden.com/LeBPages/stilllife.html €30,000-€40,000 (£25,860-£34,480 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot63