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

18 9 Aloysius C. O’Kelly (1853-1936) BRETON SCENE oil on canvas signed lower left 29 by 36.25in. (73.7 by 92.1cm) Frame Size: 36.5 by 43.5in. (92.7 by 110.5cm) Literature: Niamh O’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire, Dublin, Field Day, 2010 Aloysius O’Kelly was among the first Irish artists to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1874, under the tutelage of Jean-Léon Gérôme. He was also the first Irish artist to discover Brittany in the 1870s, and was influential in drawing other Irish artists there. He executed a series of tavern and kitchen scenes set in Brittany, redolent of the American artist Robert Wylie, and seventeenth-century Dutch interiors, subjects he continued to explore well into the twentieth century. About a day and a half ’s journey from Paris, Pont-Aven was a small community of farmers, millers and fishermen. There were several hotels, including the Pension Gloanec, where O’Kelly stayed. The patronne loved the company of her artists; the walls of her dining room and kitchen were covered in their work, featuring the local men and women who posed for the foreign artists. Several of O’Kelly’s works feature the Gloanec, including, it would appear, this painting. He shows himself to have been an acute observer of the variety and complexity of Breton dress in which infinitesimal variations revealed specifics concerning the locality and status of the individual, and which articulated relationships of status, wealth, and kinship. Many artists came to Brittany in search of the ‘primitive’, but whether the term is used to signify (negatively) a lack of civilization, or (romantically) a simplicity in the face of the over-civilization of western societies, it stereotypes those depicted. O’Kelly, however, evinced an empathy with, and conferred a dignity upon the Breton people. He had a clear understanding of Breton separatism, and perceived underlying similarities with the interrelationship of history, religion, land and nationalism in Ireland, where he adopted a dissident role which projected the west of Ireland as the repository of the spiritual, cultural, and social values of the imagined nation. In Brittany, under the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage, he oscillated between a type of rural realism and naturalism. In Concarneau, he experimented successfully with (but never fully absorbed) Impressionism, responding selectively to the pressures of modernism by employing Impressionist-type techniques for outdoor subjects while retaining more academic methods for the rendering of indoor scenes, as we see here. Since his works do not follow the usual stylistic progression - some later interiors being considerably more conservative than some earlier, more avant-garde landscapes - the dating of his paintings can be difficult. In his interiors, he reverted to a traditional genre style while his landscapes displayed considerable technical verve, as well as a knowledge and understanding of the more avant-garde trends of the time. This painting, therefore, was likely painted around 1910 in Pont-Aven, to which he returned regularly. Prof Niamh O’Sullivan, November 2024 €20,000-€30,000 (£16,810-£25,210 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot9