IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

80 48 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) STATES OF BEING 2, 1964 (TRIPTYCH) oil on canvas signed, titled and dated on reverse (concealed by frame) 16.25 by 31.75in. (41.3 by 80.6cm) Frame Size: 24 by 40in. (61 by 101.6cm) Provenance: Adam’s, 25 May 2005, lot 118; Private collection Louis le Brocquy was one of the most significant Irish artists of the twentieth century, and made an invaluable contribution to art at an international level. During his long working life, he investigated a range of subjects and means of execution and, collectively, they demonstrate his intensive exploration of the human condition. The current artwork, States of Being 2, 1964, is powerfully reflective of the artist’s desire to make sense of the relationship between the corporeal body and the emotional and intellectual interior, between the physical and the ethereal. It was painted soon after a fallow period when he destroyed many canvases until a visit to the Musée de l’Homme in Paris generated for him a renewed creative vitality. This, like the related Presences series, can be identified, too, as a consequence of an experience in 1955 when the artist was in La Mancha, during a tour in Spain. He describes observing a number of individuals who appeared bathed in bright sunlight against a white-washed wall. He wrote that: “The sheer brilliance of the sun had absorbed these human beings into invisibility” and that “from that moment I never perceived the human presence in quite the same way.” 1 He spoke of how the figures seemed both to materialise and to dissolve - or to use the artist’s own words, appeared subject to “emergence and immergence”.2 He noted too the contrast between the brilliant white of light, and the consequent contrasting darkness of shadow, a combination he had previously observed when experiencing the stillness and brilliance of snow. 3 States of Being 2 comprises three panels: the central one shows a white figure emerging from a pale blue ground, with a red glowing centre as a source of life. This light-filled panel presents as the realisation of a process; it is flanked by two darker panels suggesting an incorporeal core, as though materialising and then fading. Louis le Brocquy explored various materials, but worked primarily in oil paint as in States of Being 2, recognising the potential of his medium to articulate sensitive perceptions with subtlety. Over a number of decades, the artist created several images that included the word ‘being’ in the title - a term which suggests a kind of timeless continuity, a “succession of presents”. Dr Yvonne Scott, April 2026 1 Michael McNay, ‘Louis le Brocquy obituary’, The Guardian, 26.4.2012. 2 Louis le Brocquy, ‘Painting and Awareness’, Études irlandaises, no.4, 1979, p.153. 3 https://www.anne-madden.com/LeBPages/humanpresence.html €30,000-€40,000 (£26,090-£34,780 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot48