WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 2 DECEMBER 2024 FROM 6PM

148 113 Maurice MacGonigal PPRHA HRA HRSA (1900-1979) MID-DAY, CLIFDEN, CONNEMARA oil on board signed lower right; titled on Dawson Gallery label on reverse 18 by 27.25in. (45.7 by 69.2cm) Frame Size: 26 by 36in. (66 by 91.4cm) Provenance: Collection of Bank of Ireland The artist had gone into the town to paint a view from Christ Church which is on a hillock overlooking the town. There was a wedding being celebrated and so he couldn’t proceed, and instead came down the hill (from the old school on Churchill to beside Joyce’s newspaper shop). As it happened the Galway Bus had been involved in an accident outside Peacock’s Bar on the Recess side, so knowing he’d a few hours in which to work he set up at the bottom of the hill, as it afforded the best “long view” from the Square, including part of Main Street, and the wider view down Market Street. Clifden had been built in a triangle of three streets, with the houses on the right of Market Street being very tall and acting as a bulwark of what were really cliffside dwellings and shops protecting the town streets from the winds which blew up over the town from the harbour which lay far below it. One can still see the plunging shapes of the gardens as one approaches the town from the Ardbear road leading to the town, and past on the righthand side the remains of the earliest hydro- electric scheme built by one of King family (Castle House & Vintners at the junction of Main Street and Market and the Millers (weavers) also on Main Street. As nobody was about for quite some time the artist had almost no interruptions as he painted. The sun overhead leant an odd, almost a “mirage like” effect to the entire assemblage of buildings with a glistering reflection of the street’s surface. The foreground figure is a young female singer of “Sean Nós”who would appear from Derrygimlagh from time to time. The queue outside the butcher’s shop on the left with a Garda on duty plus the disconsolate female figure wandering around awaiting the bus gives scale to the external of the houses on the street, notably the towering forms to the chimneys on what were planned as superior town residences for the intended professional types invited by the D’Arcy’s to live there. The onslaught of the Irish Famines which hit Connemara several times from the 1820s put paid to that. The D’Arcy family (who’d built the town) gave way to the Eyres and they in turn occupied the Castle until the collapse of that Estate, but it did remain in private ownership until about 1898; thereafter it was more or less abandoned as was the town harbour (more recently semi revived.) The railway was given to the area in 1895 but only lasted about 35 years. The town still has, despite more modern interventions, a wistful air which continues to beguile the visitor. The artist, who’d known the area well since the 1920s remained in thrall to the town and that broader part of North Connemara for virtually all his long painting life. He always said that the light in Connemara was a miracle of nature, constantly changing from the silvery dawn to the purples of evening. He did remark when he’d finished and we were packing away his palette and painting box, that he wouldn’t mind another few bus accidents at Peacock’s so he could paint the town in peace (mid-morning being the steadiest light in Connemara; that evening and afternoon “light” is too fugitive for a plein air painter). The artist and his wife died in the same year and were buried in Connemara looking out to Sea. Ciarán MacGonigal, November 2024 €6,000-€8,000 (£5,040-£6,720 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot113