Whyte's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM

102 81 Donald Teskey RHA (b.1956) DOCKLANDS VII, 2002 oil on canvas signed, titled, dated and with Art First [London] label on reverse 32 by 40in. (81.3 by 101.6cm) Frame Size: 41 by 49in. (104.1 by 124.5cm) Provenance: Art First, London; Private collection; Adam’s, 28 March 2007, lot 79; Private collection Donald Teskey’s Docklands series of paintings coincide with a consolidation of a significant broadening of his work. That is, a phase when the coastal landscape of the west of Ireland became a vital source of inspiration for him. Previously, he had been fascinated by aspects of Dublin’s local topography: especially the swooping spaces of the Dodder valley around Milltown and its viaduct, and the venerable industrial fabric largely shaped by the Guinness brewery around James Street. Then, from the mid-1990s, he went to stay at the Ballinglen Art Foundation at Ballycastle on the North Mayo coast, and he also visitedWest Cork, including a trip to Cape Clear Island. In time, of course, the epic, rocky coastline of North Mayo absorbed more and more of his attention. Halfway between the historic, urban environment and the pure, wild natural realm of sea cliffs, the weather-worn harbour towns of the southwest offered an irresistible challenge. On the western seaboard, the Atlantic is dominant, vast and inescapable, shaping, scouring and defining the terrain. In retrospect it is as if, when Teskey was back in Dublin, he couldn’t get the Atlantic out of his mind, and was prompted to turn his attention to the sea at his doorstep, the Irish Sea. His Docklands paintings explore the edges of the tidal Liffey, then a relatively unchanged, deeply weathered sector of the city, curiously intimate with its close mix of industry and habitation. In his paintings it has the same, edge-of-the- world quality of the worn cliffs and the tiny harbours, a reminder that Dublin was and is a port city, wrapped around a bay. It is also, like the western coast, illuminated by a lively, watery light, the vast mirror of the sea. Where the artist had previously painted the city as landscape, now his subject is between city and landscape or, more accurately, seascape. Of Palatine descent, Donald Teskey was born in Co Limerick and studied at Limerick School of Art and Design. His early work was, unusually, entirely graphic (slightly uncanny evocation of anomalous urban spaces), and he continued to make drawings when he moved to Dublin. He began to paint gradually until eventually it became his dominant means of working (often using plasters’ trowels and knives rather than brushes). He is long established as Ireland’s foremost contemporary landscape artist. Aidan Dunne, February 2023 €30,000-€40,000 (£26,550-£35,400 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot81