60
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
Estimate:
€18,000 - €22,000
Sold
€19,000
Live Auction
Important Irish Art - 26 November 2018
Size
24 by 18.50in. (61 by 47cm)
Description
Title: IMAGE OF JAMES JOYCE, 1990
Note: This watercolour of James Joyce relates to the artist's series of Portrait Heads executed c.1975-2005. According to Anne Crookshank in her text for the 1991 Kerlin exhibition catalogue - which included the present example - , "...le Brocquy has always been a great practitioner of watercolour and the thin washes of his early oils have much in common with this method... The irregular dabs of brilliant colour, purple, blue, and green, as non-descriptive as the tesserae of a Byzantine mosaic, build up the form of his heads with a tense, nervous immediacy…The traces of paper left between each stroke, which enhance the brilliancy of the colours, and the gleam of whiteness, which glows through the paint, all help to create the truly magical effect of images coagulating in front of your eyes, coming alive, mediating, speaking, and ultimately returning to their own imaginative genius. He sometimes uses tissue paper to paint from, using it in such a way that the creases make caesuras in the strokes of paint. The results are deliberately induced accidents which help to keep the images at a distance from us, to give them reality only as paintings, not as descriptive portraits...The magic of the quietness of le Brocquy's oils is surpassed only by the excitement of his watercolours. They may be as still as the oils. But the sheer joy of their running, smudged, fragmented, clear colours brings vital reality to the spirit of his rediscovered genius. In this aspect of his work, le Brocquy has added a new dimension to his art. He has become a great colourist."
Note: This watercolour of James Joyce relates to the artist's series of Portrait Heads executed c.1975-2005. According to Anne Crookshank in her text for the 1991 Kerlin exhibition catalogue - which included the present example - , "...le Brocquy has always been a great practitioner of watercolour and the thin washes of his early oils have much in common with this method... The irregular dabs of brilliant colour, purple, blue, and green, as non-descriptive as the tesserae of a Byzantine mosaic, build up the form of his heads with a tense, nervous immediacy…The traces of paper left between each stroke, which enhance the brilliancy of the colours, and the gleam of whiteness, which glows through the paint, all help to create the truly magical effect of images coagulating in front of your eyes, coming alive, mediating, speaking, and ultimately returning to their own imaginative genius. He sometimes uses tissue paper to paint from, using it in such a way that the creases make caesuras in the strokes of paint. The results are deliberately induced accidents which help to keep the images at a distance from us, to give them reality only as paintings, not as descriptive portraits...The magic of the quietness of le Brocquy's oils is surpassed only by the excitement of his watercolours. They may be as still as the oils. But the sheer joy of their running, smudged, fragmented, clear colours brings vital reality to the spirit of his rediscovered genius. In this aspect of his work, le Brocquy has added a new dimension to his art. He has become a great colourist."
Medium
watercolour
Signature
signed and dated in pencil lower right
Provenance
Kerlin Gallery, Dublin;Where purchased by the present owner
Exhibited
'Louis le Brocquy, Paintings 1940-1990', Kerlin Gallery [Hibernian Fine Art], Dublin, January 1991
