IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

34 20 Kathleen Fox (1880-1963) PONT DE SULLY, PARIS oil on canvas signed lower left 24 by 36in. (61 by 91.4cm) Raised in Glasthule Lodge, Glenageary, Co. Dublin, Kathleen Fox attended Loreto Abbey in Dalkey before entering the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), where she studied under William Orpen, becoming one of his star pupils and later working as his studio assistant for a time. Orpen is noted as commenting on the calibre of students in the DMSA at that time, “The school was really turning out good work, and there was a lot of promising youth - James Slater, John [Seán] Keating, Miss Crilly, Miss Fox, Miss O’Kelly andWhelan and Touey, all with talent.”1 Fox was skilled across several disciplines; painting, woodcarving, stained glass (an example of which can be found in St. Joseph’s church, Glenageary), silver, costume design, enamelling, the latter for which she won a gold medal in 1908. She first exhibited with the RHA in 1911 (Science and Power, Collection of the Hugh Lane, Dublin) before travelling to Paris and then to Bruges. By 1916 she had returned to Dublin (with an address at 34 Wicklow St.) and recorded firsthand the events of the Easter Rising in her painting The Arrest (Niland Collection, Sligo). It depicts Countess Markievicz in military dress standing beside Michael Mallin during the surrender of the Irish Citizen Army at the College of Surgeons. Fox sketched the scene as it unfolded, later completing a large canvas (which includes a self-portrait) in secret before sending it to New York for safe keeping in 1917. After its rediscovery in the 1940s it was returned to the artist in Dublin, from whom it was acquired by Sligo County Library and Museum in 1962. Her activities during the Rising garnered her the name ‘little rebel’ among her contemporaries. During WWI Fox had a studio in London and there she met and married Lt. Cyril Pym. A daughter was born in 1918 shortly after Pym was killed in action. She relocated to Nice and continued to exhibit in Dublin and London as well as France. In 1921 her work was shown at the New English Art Club, the National Portrait Society, the RA and the RHA. At this time, she also painted a portrait of the influential Irish- born Archbishop of Melbourne, the Most Rev. Dr Daniel Mannix (Collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin). In the mid-1920s she returned to Dublin and on her mother’s death inherited Brookfield, a large house in Milltown. Between the years 1924 and 1943 she did not submit any work to the RHA, however she was a sought-after and successful portraitist (Grace Gifford and Lord and Lady Powerscourt were among her sitters) both in Ireland and England. Her later work of the 1940s and 1950s comprised mainly interior scenes and still lifes overshadowing in some ways the more dynamic work of her earlier years. When her aforementioned painting, Science and Power, was exhibited in 1911 her address inscribed verso was 20 Rue Chalgrin, Ave. de Bois de Boulognes, Paris, near the Arc de Triomphe; approximately 5.5km from Pont de Sully. The cast-iron and stone Pont de Sully was built between 1874 and 1876 and connects the Île Saint-Louis to the Right and Left Banks. In the 1900s, the banks of the Seine near Pont de Sully acted as busy industrial sites where building materials were unloaded from barges, often appearing as piles on the quays as seen in the present work. Fox’s dynamic composition here shows carts with horses feeding while several workmen shovel sand which has been deposited quayside by a large crane. The scene is watched by a curious crowd that line the bridge and peer down at the spectacle. The painting exudes the characteristic excitement of Fox’s early work with the bridge - in a ‘patriotic’ green - calling to mind her Dublin scene The Four Courts, c.1922 (Collection of University College Dublin2 which includes the O’Donovan Rossa or Richmond Bridge as it was previously known. Testament to the importance of Kathleen Fox’s work within the canon of 20th Century Irish art, in 2025 the National Gallery of Ireland acquired for its permanent collection a theatrical, Orpenesque painting by her, Portrait of a Woman (Self-Portrait), c.1917. That work was formerly in the collection of Irish-American art collector and Federal Judge the Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. (1920-2000). Adelle Hughes April 2026 FOOTNOTES: 1 Steward, James C., Ed., When Time Began to Rant and Rage, Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland, Merrell Holberton, London, 1998, p.154 2 Steward, James C., Ed., When Time Began to Rant and Rage, Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland, Merrell Holberton, London, 1998, p.47 (Fig. 14) €5,000-€7,000 (£4,350-£6,090 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot20