WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 31 MAY 2021 AT 6PM

66 48 Harry Kernoff RHA (1900-1974) CAPTAIN DOYLE, BUGLER, GAP OF DUNLOE, KILLARNEY, 1944 oil on board signed lower left; inscribed with title on reverse 29.75 by 22.25in. (75.6 by 56.5cm) Frame Dimensions: 35.5 by 27.5in. (90.2 by 69.9cm) Some surface dirt visible. Otherwise very good condition. Provenance: Sotheby’s, 18 May 2001, lot 223; Christie’s, 23 March 2017, lot 83; Private collection In its notice of the 1944 Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition, the Irish Times announced that ‘Mr. Kernoff has been to Kerry.’ Indeed, in the summer of 1943, Kernoff had toured the county in the company of Patrick Kavanagh and a wealth of oils, watercolours and pencil sketches show his interest in depicting the everyday life and characters of Killarney and its hinterland. In the same year as the Irish Times notice, five of the six works exhibited by Kernoff at the RHA were Kerry scenes, including the present portrait, listed as ‘Capt. Doyle, Bugler, Gap of Dunloe, Killarney.’ Although more recently catalogued as ‘Willy Doyle’, it is likely that this is a portrait of Patrick ‘Toas’ Doyle (d. 1961). An account of the bugler’s life published in the Kerryman noted the fame that he had garnered through his popularity with tourists visiting the Gap: like his father before him, Doyle would sound the bugle from Echo Lake, from where it would reverberate throughout the surrounding area. The sounding of the bugle in Killarney had a long history: Alfred, Lord Tennyson commemorated his own experience of it in ‘The Splendour Falls’ (‘Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying / Blow, bugle: answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying!’) and bugler James O’Connor played for Queen Victoria during her 1901 visit to the lakes. Shown in his jarvey’s tweeds, Kernoff’s portrait of Doyle is typically robust: with ruddy cheeks and a wry smile, Doyle clutches a glass of stout and firmly grips his bugle under the opposite arm. The corner of a box of matches peeking out from his breast pocket draws the eye, as does the patterning of his hat and waistcoat. Born in London in January 1900, Kernoff moved to Dublin with his family in 1914. While working as an apprentice cabinet maker with his father, the young artist attended classes at the Kevin Street Technical Schools, before moving to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art as an evening student in 1919. In 1923, Kernoff was awarded the Taylor Scholarship, enabling him to enrol full-time as day student, and in 1927 his first solo exhibition was held in the rooms of the Society of Dublin Painters. Over the following decades, Kernoff dedicated his painting practice to the representation of daily life in Ireland’s towns and cities. Dr Kathryn Milligan, May 2021 €8,000-€12,000 (£6,960-£10,430 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot48