IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 28 September 2026

70 44 Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) LA PIETÀ, 1928 gouache signed and dated lower right 13.25 by 13.25in. (33.7 by 33.7cm) Frame Size: 21 by 19in. (53.3 by 48.3cm) Provenance: Taylor Galleries, Dublin, 1980; Private collection La Pietà dates to 1928, a significant year for Mainie Jellett, when she was included among nine Irish artists to represent Ireland at the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Just five years previous Jellett’s work had been condemned by the critics in Dublin when she exhibited her Modernist paintings - among them Decoration, 1923 (Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.1326 ) - to overwhelmingly negative reaction with the Irish Times describing the national treasure as a ‘freak’ picture and comparing it to an image of “a malformed onion”. 1 So what changed in those intervening years? In her essay, Mainie Jellett: Translating Cubism, Dr Riann Coulter argued that following the hostility she encountered in 1923 the artist realised that in order convert Ireland to the Modernist cause she would have to communicate with her audience in a different way. Coulter writes, ‘An alternative vehicle was needed, a discourse both spiritual and Irish that could sustain her abstract aesthetic. It was through the familiar iconography of religious imagery that Jellett’s reconciliation of Ireland and Modernism was to be achieved.’ 2 Celtic art also had its role to play in making Jellett’s work more palatable. Coulter continues, ‘The stylistic influence of Celtic art can be discerned in Jellett’s religious work. Her use of the rectilinear framing devices to contain the spiralling form... [r]elates to manuscript illuminations from The Books of Kells, where imposing frames enclose figures, and areas of dynamic knotwork are anchored within static borders.’ 3 La Pietà exhibits these three elements - Cubist, religious and Celtic - that helped ingratiate her work to Irish audiences. Referencing Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece in marble, here Jellett has refined to their essentials, the figure of the Virgin Mary cloaked in blue cradling the limp body of her son; two dashes of yellow indicating each of their halos. The distilled form and line she uses expertly convey the monumentality of the scene and although the figures are flatly rendered they feel weighty. The palette is subdued and decoration is minimal with dots, flecks and chevron patterning employed within lineal borders. Her approach was clearly successful and, beyond her Olympic recognition, she would continue on to become the first president of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art among other accolades. When she died in 1944 memorial exhibitions took place at the Dublin Painters and Victor Waddington Galleries. A sketch for the present work appeared at auction in 20014 while an almost identical work in oil on board sold in 1999.5 Jellett’s work has most recently been celebrated in the National Gallery of Ireland in the exhibition Maine Jellett & Evie Hone. The Art of Friendship, April to August 2025. Adelle Hughes, August 2026 1 Kissane, Seán, Ed., Analysing Cubism, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 2013, p.98. 2 Ibid., p.105. 3 Ibid., p.106. 4 Christie’s, 17 May 2001, ex lot 149. 5 Sotheby’s, 21 May 1999, lot 324. €20,000-€30,000 (£17,090-£25,640 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot44