IMPORTANT IRISH ART Monday 23 November 2026 from 6PM

56 31 Kathleen Fox (1880-1963) PONT DE SULLY, PARIS oil on canvas signed lower left 24 by 36in. (61 by 91.4cm) Frame Size: 30 by 42in. (76.2 by 106.7cm) During WWI Kathleen 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 Dublin) 2 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 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) €3,000-€5,000 (£2,520-£4,200 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot3 1