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

88 59 Neil Shawcross RHA RUA (b.1940) DANCING NUDE, 2009 acrylic on paper signed lower centre; dated lower right 59.50 by 40in. (151.1 by 101.6cm) Frame Size: 67 by 46.5 (170.2 by 118.1cm) Around 2007 Neil Shawcross embarked on a series of large-scale nude paintings. In these works, it seems as if nymphs, once restricted, have tumbled to earth from the shackles of an ancient, classical, sculptural frieze, and are delighting in frenzied paint-splattered free fall. The Greek temple was moral, rooted and foursquare. It represented stability in religion, governance and democracy. The temple-controlled waywardness. These ‘ladies’ have had enough; they want to trade ‘civilitas’ for caprice and live only for the moment, in a garden of earthly delights. As such, they recall the hedonism, joie de vivre and musicality of Matisse and the spirit of his great works such as ‘The Joy of Living’ (1905-6) and ‘Dance’(1910). Shawcross’s early nude paintings, (late 70s/early 80s), were refined interpretations of figures in domestic settings, by way of Bonnard or Vuillard. They were specific, naturalistic figures, set into a decorative scheme where colour and pattern were important. The journey made by the artist since then has been one determined by release - technically, emotionally, as well as the abandonment of context. The figure through the years has become more and more abstract, weighty, fluid and playful. They have become emancipated archetypes, shaped and developed by way of years of observation in the life room and the pull and push of painterly concerns. Strict anatomical truth has been replaced by painterly ‘rightness’; form and feeling are co- joined and celebrated by the demands of paint. What has contributed to this free development of paint in this nude series has been by way of cross fertilization from experiments in his other subject interests, especially developments in his portrait painting. With the portraits, life-size in scale, he moved progressively towards the general application of looser thinner washes and tonal concerns with selected contrasting heavier impasto patches. However, with the portraits, (specific individuals and mostly male), the subjects must be in front of him for the painting session. The nudes, by contrast, are conceived from memory or from generalised short-hand line drawings and are all women. Shawcross inherited an interest in music by way of his family background. It can be seen music plays a role in the inscape of these nude figures. They clang, jingle and jive; they resonate and reverberate in their dancing and frolicking. The sheer delight the artist takes in creating these ‘maenad’ figures is manifested and registered in the joy they give off; in the spiritual feedback he gets from their ‘bacchanal’. Prof Liam Kelly, April 2025 €3,000-€4,000 (£2,540-£3,390 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot59