IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 DECEMBER 2025

20 9 Aloysius C. O’Kelly (1853-1936) BRETON CHURCH INTERIOR WITH FIGURES, c.1905 oil on canvas signed lower right 36 by 25in. (91.4 by 63.5cm) Frame Size: 43 by 32in. (109.2 by 81.3cm) Provenance: Morgan O’Driscoll, 14 September 2020, lot 24; Private collection This painting is evidently a large oil sketch for the painting dated 1905, exhibited Cynthia O’Connor (1994) as Brittany, the Stained Glass Window; and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (1999-2000) as Inside the Chapel. From the subject matter, and in the knowledge that O’Kelly rarely dated his paintings, (and then only those exhibited publicly), it is reasonable to suggest that Inside the Chapel is the painting exhibited as Devotion at the New York Watercolour Club (no. 3) in 1906, and the Corcoran Biennial, Washington (no. 178) in 1907, and that this painting is a large scale preliminary work. O’Kelly painted several versions on this theme of devotion, set in the same location, the lovely pilgrimage church, Chapelle Locmaria-an-hent, in the commune de Saint Yvi (between Pont-Aven and Quimper). These paintings span a twenty-five-year period. Both Church Interior Brittany and Inside the Chapel relate to an earlier version, probably painted in the late 1870s, and taken from a different angle. Although this version was probably not painted until the early years of the twentieth century, the subject matter harks back to traditional patterns of Catholic conservative worship, not dissimilar to that in Ireland at the same time. Renowned for its stained glass, the church was built in the sixteenth-century and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There is a seventeenth century statue of the Virgin to the left of the altar. Although clearly closely related, there are a number of differences between the two paintings. In the more finished version, the mother and child kneel devoutly in front of the altar. In this painting, there is only one young woman, now on the right of the man. Here the artist has attempted to include the arch but, finding the composition unsatisfactory, moved in closer to the altar in the dated, more finished painting. Although the brushwork is broad, loose and fluid and, therefore, inimical to detail, O’Kelly manages to imbue the stained glass with a vibrant prismatic quality typical of this series. Dr Niamh O’Sullivan Professor Emerita of Visual Culture (National College of Art and Design, Ireland) Founding Curator of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, Quinnipiac University €6,000-€8,000 (£5,260-£7,020 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot9