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76 49 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) ABSTRACT, c.1956 carpet with Donegal Carpets Ltd. label on reverse 49 by 74in. (124.5 by 188cm) Frame Size: Provenance: Fonsie Mealy’s, 10 July 2024, lot 270; Private collection The carpet - one of only 3 examples known - is labelled “Inver”, referring to the number of tufts per square inch rather than the design. Judging by the label, this rug was a prototype design, intended to guide buyers as to potential rugs that could be commissioned in different colours. Louis le Brocquy’s association with tapestry design would lead to a wider interest in applied art generally. He designed a series of screen-printed fabric furnishings commissioned by John McGuire Ltd, including Megalithic and Flight, exhibited by the Societé des Décorateurs, Grand Palais, Paris (May 1954). He designed a large-scale carpet commissioned by Córas Tráchtála Teoranta, Dublin, inaugurating his collaboration with the hand-knotting craft of Donegal Carpets, Killybegs. The artist adapted his freehand drawings of the spiral pockmarks on the megaliths of Newgrange, Co. Meath (prized at the 1952 Fleischman International Carpet Design Competition, Detroit Institute of Art). Le Brocquy designed colour blended woven sisal carpeting for Tintawn, Irish Ropes Ltd, Newbridge and was a founder with his friend, the architect Michael Scott, of Signa Ltd., Design Consultants (1954). Signa promoted industrial design with pioneering effect in Ireland and England. [See extract from Irish Times article in 1960 below] Le Brocquy’s outstanding design work was recognised by numerous appointments including: Member of the Irish Council of Design; a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artist’s, London; a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London. Le Brocquy was appointed an inaugural Board Member of Kilkenny Design Workshops (1964-77). Co-directors include Terence Conran with whom he perceives the workshops as a potential Irish Bauhaus (a vision opposed by the director WilliamWalsh). Le Brocquy writes: ‘Art - official art - had long ago suffered the same social dislocation as other made things. Painting and sculpture were wholly wrenched away from other kinds of manufacture and preciously regarded as Fine Art. Art, which exists on all levels of consciousness or dies, died. In a sense, the great gesture of the Bauhaus can be expressed as a repudiation in positive terms of the exclusive concept of Fine Art. In it a sensuous unity was once again established, and art reasserted its sensible, inherent power within the varied structures of painting or chair, textile or building. This fusion took place in a temporary and local condition of white heat which the Bauhaus historically represents.’1 Louis le Brocquy is appointed Visiting Tutor in Textile Design, Royal College of Art, London (1955-58). Works alongside Margaret Leischner, Head of the Weaving Department. The artist will be proposed the Professorship of the department by the Rector, Sir Robin Darwin, an offer which he declines. In the summer of 1955, the artist is commissioned to tour Spain by Ambassador magazine on behalf of the British textile trade. Accompanied by the photographer Jay, travels to Granada, Cordoba, Segovia, Madrid, Seville, noting numerous impressions for textile designs. The artist’s discovery there of a ‘persistent visual tension’, is translated into numerous patterns drawn from a wide range of sources, including cobblestones, sickles, stucco in village walls, and Azulejos in El Greco’s Toledo house. Contributes Pattern in Contrast: Hot, Dull-Cool, Bright, ‘a colour impression by Louis le Brocquy’ (Ambassador, No 10, London 1955). Three leading textile firms issue the designs: DavidWhitehead Ltd, Furnishing Fabric; Seckers Fabrics, woven silks, and Horrockses, Fashion prints, one famously worn by Princess Margaret. Inspired by the violent contrast of sun seen through lattice blinds in Andalusia, designs Sol Y Sombra (1955), the seventh tapestry to date, conceived to hang vertically or horizontally as evidenced by date and signature. Identified as le Brocquy’s only abstract work, the design coincides with a momentous change about to take place in his painting. 1 Louis le Brocquy, ‘Art and Manufacture’, Irish Times (Dublin, 5 April 1956). €6,000-€8,000 (£5,040-£6,720 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot49