WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 May 2025 FROM 6PM

18 8 Mildred Anne Butler RWS (1858-1941) DOLCE FAR NIENTE, 1893 watercolour signed lower left; signed and inscribed on reverse (concealed by frame) 20.50 by 28.25in. (52.1 by 71.8cm) Frame Size: 32 by 39 (81.3 by 99.1cm) Provenance: Gorry Gallery, Dublin, 2000; Private collection Exhibited: Water Colour Society of Ireland, Dublin, 1893, catalogue no. 247; ’An Exhibition of 18th, 19th and 20th Century Paintings’, Gorry Gallery, Dublin, 2-10 November 2000, catalogue no. 53 Dolce Far Niente was exhibited at the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI) in 1893, Butler’s second year submitting work there. It was one of thirteen pictures included by her that year and priced at £30-0-0, it was the most expensive watercolour she had shown with the society to date. A number of her watercolours from the early 1890s were included in the National Gallery of Ireland’s (NGI) recent celebration of Mildred Anne Butler’s work - At Home in Nature, 14 September to 5 January 2025 - among them, three large scale exhibition paintings with equally playful titles; The High Court Justice (exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1892), The Valiant Three (RA, 1894) and Green-Eyed Jealousy (RA, 1894). Dolce Far Niente, meaning “the sweetness of doing nothing, sweet idleness” in Italian, depicts two cows one lying down and the other standing among a bed of daffodils neither doing very much but ‘being’ in the landscape. The charming scene is still and meditative, and Butler’s handling of the medium expertly communicates a hazy spring day in the Irish countryside. The tranquility of the scene is further emphasised by a rook - another favoured subject - perched high in the tree in the middle distance, a nod to her future masterpiece Shades of Evening, 1904 (Collection of the NGI). Butler’s oeuvre took inspiration from the natural world which surrounded her home, Kilmurry House - a Georgian manor on 350 acres - purchased by her father, the grandson of the 11th Viscount Mountgarret, Captain Henry Butler, in the late 1800s. Butler lived in Kilmurry until her death at the age of 83, its orangery used by her as a studio to record all that surrounded her. Having such a privileged background, one could understand a woman of her means indulging in sweet idleness, however Mildred Anne Butler’s talent and ambition lead her instead to become one the Ireland’s first professional women artists, a title championed by the NGI in their recent show. She was a regular exhibitor with the WCSI, the RHA, the Society of Lady Artists, the RA, the Royal Watercolour Society, Dudley Gallery, London and the Ulster Academy of Arts, Belfast. In 1893 when Dolce Far Niente was painted her work entered the Royal Collection for the first time; this would be a pivotal moment in her career as an artist cementing her reputation and bolstering demand for her work both in Ireland and abroad. Adelle Hughes April 2025 €8,000-€12,000 (£6,780-£10,170 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot8