IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 DECEMBER 2025

80 51 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) STUDY TOWARDS AN IMAGE OF JAMES JOYCE watercolour and crayon numbered [W664] and partly titled on reverse (concealed by frame) 23 by 17in. (58.4 by 43.2cm) Frame Size: 29 by 22.5in. (73.7 by 57.2cm) Provenance: On the Wall Gallery, Dublin; Private collection According to Anne Crookshank*: ’le Brocquy has always been a great practitioner of watercolour and the thin washes of his early oils have much in common with this method. But… [h]is watercolours have taken on a new value. The irregular dabs of brilliant colour, purple, blue, and green, as non-descriptive as the tesserae of a Byzantine mosaic, build up the form of his heads with a tense, nervous immediacy which oil with its overlapping layers and opaque thickness never can achieve. The traces of paper left between each stroke, which enhance the brilliancy of the colours, and the gleam of whiteness, which glows through the paint, all help to create the truly magical effect of images coagulating in front of your eyes, coming alive, mediating, speaking, and ultimately returning to their own imaginative genius. He sometimes uses tissue paper to paint from, using it in such a way that the creases make caesuras in the strokes of paint. The results are deliberately induced accidents which help to keep the images at a distance from us, to give them reality only as paintings, not as descriptive portraits... The magic of the quietness of le Brocquy’s oils is surpassed only by the excitement of his watercolours. They may be as still as the oils. But the sheer joy of their running, smudged, fragmented, clear colours brings vital reality to the spirit of his rediscovered genius. In this aspect of his work, le Brocquy has added a new dimension to his art. He has become a great colourist.’ ... *As quoted on www.anne-madden.com €15,000-€20,000 (£13,160-£17,540 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot51