IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 27 MAY 2024 AT 6PM

84 56 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) IMAGE OF SAMUEL BECKETT, 1982 oil on canvas signed and dated on reverse (concealed by frame) 27.50 by 27.50in. (69.9 by 69.9cm) Frame Size: 31.5 by 31.5in. (80 by 80cm) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist; Sotheby’s, 7 May 2008, lot 196; Private collection Louis le Brocquy has been recognised as one of the major artists emerging in Ireland during the twentieth century. In the 1960s, following a period when he was unhappy with his output, he visited Musée de l’homme in Paris, where his observation of ritualistic, spiritualised exhibits triggered his celebrated series of artworks known collectively as the Head series. Commencing first with the ancestral heads that referenced the earliest, anonymous, human predecessors, the artist went on to explore a means to represent the imaginative processes of a range of recognised creative individuals - artists and writers known to him either personally or through their work, including WB Yeats, James Joyce, the painter Francis Bacon, and Samuel Beckett. Le Brocquy focused particularly on the head as the container of intellect and inventiveness; in some works in the series, he included also the hands for their expressive gestures. While this body of paintings has been referred to as portraits, the artist sought rather to reflect some essence of the individual he addressed, in this case, seeking to demonstrate the “Beckettness of Beckett” to use his own words.1 He developed an original approach in projecting the head as a complex structure evincing both the internal processes of the imagination, as well as the external realisation of inspiration. While the portraits are all recognisably of the individual portrayed, the translucent layering of colour suggests the emergence of creativity. Samuel Beckett, who the artist knew well, was the subject of several of the head images - each of which was different, indicating alternative aspects of the subject. The artist recognised the multiplicity of character, how one image alone might capture a likeness but could not reflect the complexity and range of the sitter’s personality and capacity. Le Brocquy projects the psychological penetration indicated by a phrase, by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, that the artist quoted: ”Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown and what appears to be plurality is merely a series of different aspects of the same thing.” 2 This image indicates the familiar, creviced, visage of Samuel Beckett, well known both through discerning photographs and through various incisive paintings of him by the artist. The face emerges from a monochromatic ground, as though coming into being, but retaining an elusiveness. One side of the face is in shadow, the eye a dark pool, while the other side appears to be developing a more tangible form. Le Brocquy developed a remarkable capacity to suggest both the recognisable features while also conveying the depths of humanity and of creativity. Yvonne Scott, April 2024 1 Louis le Brocquy (October 1979) quoted in Louis le Brocquy Portrait Heads, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2006, p. 63. 2 Louis le Brocquy, ‘Notes on painting and awareness’, in Dorothy Walker (ed.), Louis le Brocquy, Dublin, 1981, p. 139. €120,000-€150,000 (£102,560-£128,210 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot56