IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 29 SEPTEMBER 2025

68 47 Daniel O’Neill (1920-1974) COUPLE BY THE SEA oil on canvas signed lower right; with Oriel Gallery label on reverse 20 by 16in. (50.8 by 40.6cm) Frame Size: 25 by 21in. (63.5 by 53.3cm) Provenance: Oriel Gallery, Dublin, 1970s; Private collection; Thence by descent Dan O’Neill was clearly attracted to the sea and often explored it as an elemental force. His deployment of the sea can play an atmospheric, mood-setting role, as in many of his paintings of female bathers, or where the sea plays a dramatic role, as in some of his Co. Donegal paintings. It may be noted that the romantic poets, and an artist like Turner, were drawn to the great rumblings of nature - storms at sea, avalanches. With O’Neill. there is something of the legacy of the romantic idea of the affinity between the soul of mankind and nature. A writer like Synge also reminds us of the sea as life enhancing but it takes lives away as well. O’Neill lived in Co. Down for a period and painted, inter alia, ‘The Black Rocks of Tyrella’, (late-1950s) which has a quasi-surreal foreboding atmosphere, where the rocks are gnarled and the lighting is dramatic, inducing a dream-like quality. The ‘Couple by the Sea’ shares something of that drama. The man seems to be restraining the female figure. His left arm holding her right arm behind her back. While she is semi-undressed, Venus-like, wayward and somewhat unworldly, he is more rooted and quotidian. It reminds me of the Irish/Scottish myth of the Selkie. It is a ‘transformation’myth where a seal sheds its pelt to become a woman, on land. She may fall in love with, and marry a local, but continues to long for a return to the sea. However, It is only by retrieving and wearing the formerly discarded seal pelt that such transformation is possible. Indeed, it is tempting to read one of the lower left rocks, protruding from the water, as a seal. The composition is complex and unsettling. The artist’s favourite colours, red and green, set the scene. The sun and the moon light up the ‘stage’ for this earth/marine operatic drama, while the rocks conspire in the mis-en-scene. To the left the sky is a blood- red saturated cloud, giving way to a moon-lit section, reflected on the sea, to the right. As such it corresponds to the tense duality of the two figures in the foreground. The rocks form a kind of sheltering grotto for the couple while the lapping shallow water in the foreground is rendered in a translucent bottle green. The variety of colours, tints and forms contribute to the painting’s mannerist inclinations, and their sensuous application of paint is reminiscent of earlier Venetian painting. All in all, it is a challenging work. Prof Liam Kelly September 2025 €20,000-€30,000 (£17,390-£26,090 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot47