IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 9 MARCH 2026

40 21 William Conor OBE RHA RUA ROI (1881-1968) THE SHUGGLESHOO/THE SUGGLEY SHOE, c.1951 oil on canvas signed lower left; titled and numbered [no. 11] on reverse; also titled and inscribed on Bell Gallery label on reverse 20 by 24in. (50.8 by 61cm) Frame Size: 30.5 by 34.5in. (77.5 by 87.6cm) Provenance: Bell Gallery, Belfast, March 1985; Collection of Sheridan H. Hills; Adam’s, 9 December 2020, lot 43 as Children Playing on a Seesaw; Private collection; Morgan O’Driscoll, 26 October 2021, lot 54; Private collection Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition 1951, no. 40 [titled ‘The Shuggleshoo’]; ’William Conor, Paintings and Drawings’, Bell Gallery, Belfast, 1964, catalogue no. 27 [titled ‘Suggley Shoe’] In the mid 1940s and early 1950s William Conor exhibited a series of works depicting children at play, including Swing High, Swing Low (1944), In the Botanic Gardens (1946), Hobby Horses (1947) and Chair-o-Planes (1951). The present painting dates to this body of work and was exhibited under the title The Shuggleshoo at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1951. It closely relates to the earlier work In the Botanic Gardens, 1946 which was included in an exhibition entitled A Time and a Place: Two Centuries of Irish Social Life at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin in 2006. It was appropriate that Conor should be included in this landmark exhibition as his substantial oeuvre recorded much of the social history of Ulster of the time. In the catalogue to that show Brendan Rooney wrote: “The carefree, excited play of children on a see-saw on a bright summer’s day can be seen as a kind of pictorial antidote to some of the harsher realities - illness, physical work, penury and unemployment - of life in working-class Belfast in the 1920s and 1930s, and a counterpoint to the daily toils of artisans and the lower middle-class. Significantly, and notwithstanding the complexity of Conor’s identity, these pictures, including those of children at play, transcend the sectarianism that had crept with increasing virulence into Belfast from the late nineteenth century onwards.” The Shuggleshoo is almost a mirror image of the Botanic Gardens painting. Here eight children have divided themselves into two teams to play on the seesaw or the shuggleshoo. The lower right quadrant of the painting is dominated by the three girls and one boy on the downward slant. They hold on tight to each other, with the second girl beaming out at the viewer, clearly enjoying herself. Their opposition hangs precariously in the air, legs dangling, with the child on the end looking ready to abandon the game. In the background figures gather in two groups perhaps busying themselves with younger children or preparing a picnic. Conor’s pictures are rarely still; people chat, walk, play games, dance, make music, gather for ceremony, sport, celebration or labour. They are humble in terms of their subject matter but bold and singular in their style. His use of colour is subtle but effective and recalls the technique of ‘hand tinting’ in photography and film of the 19th century. Indeed, Conor’s paintings are a snapshot of everyday life, capturing those fleeting moments of joy and elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary. Adelle Hughes February 2026 €18,000-€22,000 (£15,650-£19,130 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot21