IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 DECEMBER 2025

40 22 Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) WOMAN FEEDING HENS, 1921 oil on canvas signed and dated lower left 28 by 21in. (71.1 by 53.3cm) Frame Size: 43 by 35.5in. (109.2 by 90.2cm) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist, 1923; Thence by descent; Whyte’s, 21 September 2004, lot 84; Private collection Exhibited: Possibly at the RHA, Dublin, 1923, catalogue no. 211, as A Poultry Yard This is one of Frank McKelvey’s earliest farmyard scenes, a genre for which he became highly regarded and greatly sought after. The loose Impressionist manner of its execution - indeed the composition, with the light falling dappled through the foliage, has a distinct French feeling - is characteristic of his early period and is an influence from A.R. Baker (1865-1939) under whom he studied at the Belfast College of Art. In about 1920, at the outset of his career, McKelvey rented a cottage at the Maze, near Hillsborough in County Down, and henceforth until 1926, when he and his wife (he married in 1924) moved back to Belfast, the surrounding landscape in the valley of the river Lagan was to be his main source of inspiration. At the Maze McKelvey had an orchard and about half an acre of land on which he kept a flock of some sixty hens of various breeds. Besides their domestic use, these hens were important as a source of subject matter for his pictures. “It was through this opportunity” he wrote later in life, “that I was able to study poultry in all effects of sunlight - a subject in which I have always been deeply interested” (unpublished biographical note, artist’s papers). Woman Feeding Hens was almost certainly painted at the Maze. The sense of spontaneity for the moment, of fresh air, tranquillity, of life operating on a human scale, are all typical characteristics of McKelvey’s oeuvre. And the human element is important in these pictures, for they represent a tradition that has virtually disappeared with the growth of the semi-industrial complexes of modern day farms. The handling of the paint in Woman Feeding Hens is also typical of McKelvey’s early period. The moderately heavy impasto employed on the chickens is perhaps unexpected, but serves to emphasise what is the main subject of the composition. The size of the picture, and its obvious importance amongst McKelvey’s early works, suggests that it may be the composition titled A Poultry Yard that he exhibited at the RHA in 1923, priced at £25-0-0, a considerable sum at that time. A watercolour study for this work, signed and dated 1920, shows that McKelvey had been developing his ideas for the composition, which must have been completed early in 1921, for some time. Dr. S.B. Kennedy €30,000-€50,000 (£26,320-£43,860 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot22