WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 7 March 2022 from 6PM

80 58 Patrick Hennessy RHA (1915-1980) THE KILLARNEY BOY oil on canvas signed lower left; with Guildhall Gallery [Chicago] label on reverse 25 by 35in. (63.5 by 88.9cm) Frame size: 35 by 45in. (88.9 by 114.3cm) Provenance: Cottone Auctions, New York, 28 September 2019, lot 79; Private collection The American market was an important platform and lucrative revenue stream for Patrick Hennessy. His relationship with the prestigious Guildhall Galleries on Michigan Boulevard, Chicago began in 1966, however, it was much earlier in his career - towards the end of the 1940s - when he came to the attention of American audiences in a favorable review by Time Magazine of a Manhattan Gallery exhibition showing the work of twelve Irish artists, including Jack B. Yeats and Louis le Brocquy. (1) The following decade Hennessy and his life partner, the artist Henry (Harry) Robertson Craig RHA (1916-1984), played a vital role in the establishment of their friend David Hendrik’s gallery at No. 3 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. The gallery opened on 12 April 1956 and provided Hennessy - among many other artists - with financial security owing to annual solo exhibitions and participation in group shows. Opportunities for Hennessy grew in tandem with the gallery’s reputation, among them a contract with the distinguished Guildhall Galleries, renowned for their professional work practices, innovative marketing, and the use of superior framers. Although undated, the present work bears the Guildhall Galleries label which places it in the latter half of the 1960s or later. Hennessy’s first solo exhibition took place there in 1966, it was a success and the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship. Testament to the achievements of artist and dealer, by 1975 Hennessy was the subject of a ten-year retrospective with the Guildhall. A small number of Kerry paintings by Patrick Hennessy have appeared at auction, unpopulated scenes in the main, among them Lakes of Killarney formerly the collection of Eoin O’Malley and Una O’Higgins O’Malley. (2) The Killarney Boy, uses a device typical of the artist, placing a figure of a young man in the foreground of a rural setting. The adolescent gazes out from the canvas, a woolen jumper knotted across a white, neatly buttoned shirt. He appears in the landscape without being part of it a recurring theme in Hennessy’s oeuvre. The Killarney Boy probably dates to around 1968 based on its similarities with the privately owned Boy and Pony, Killarney of the same year (3). Adelle Hughes February 2022 For further reading see: Hennessy, De Profundis, Ed. Seán Kissane, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2016. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Patrick Hennessy, De Profundis, IMMA, 24 March to 24 July 2016 1. Hennessy, De Profundis, Ed. Seán Kissane, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2016, p.21-22 2. Adams, 12 June 2019, lot 24 3. Hennessy, De Profundis, Ed. Seán Kissane, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2016, p. 74 (full page illustration) €12,000-€15,000 (£10,170-£12,710 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot58

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