WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2022

52 31 Harry Kernoff RHA (1900-1974) LIBERTY HALL, DUBLIN (NIGHT), 1934 watercolour signed and dated lower right; with original inscribed label detailing title and artist’s address [13 Stamer Street, Dublin] on reverse 18 by 21.50in. (45.7 by 54.6cm) Frame Dimensions: 30 by 34in. (76.2 by 86.4cm) Provenance: Adam’s, 29 March 2000, lot 23; Private collection Writing after Harry Kernoff’s death in 1975, John Nolan hailed the artist as ‘the artist of the workers’, noting his lifelong ‘identification with progressive, radical, working class ideas.’ In his art, one of Kernoff’s most manifest displays of sympathy with the political left came through his repeated depiction of Liberty Hall on Eden Quay, then a former hotel building rather than the modernist tower seen there today. The building had an illustrious history in the early twentieth century: in 1912, it was purchased by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and the following year, it housed a soup kitchen during the Lockout. As the headquarters of the Irish Citizen Army, copies of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic were printed there and it suffered heavy shelling in 1916. Along with his repeated depiction of the building, Kernoff reinforced his belief in the site as a symbol by including it in his woodcut portrait of James Connolly, replaced in later printings by the plough and the stars. The earliest extant sketch by Kernoff of Liberty Hall is dated to 1928 (National Gallery of Ireland), although he first exhibited a version of the composition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1927. It was not unusual for Kernoff to rework compositions in several media (including pen and ink, watercolour, oils, and woodcut) across a broad time span. In the present work, he characteristically depicts a cross-section of Dublin’s working population, from labourers and dockers to aproned women and busy mothers. The building is bathed in light, with an open door and the shadows of people at work inside its walls: this is Liberty Hall a bastion of political enlightenment and community organization in the heart of Dublin city. Dr Kathryn Milligan August 2022 €20,000-€30,000 (£17,240-£25,860 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot31