9.50 by 15.50in. (24.1 by 39.4cm)

Title: THE BLUE POOL
Note: Ernie O'Malley was very supportive of Evie Hone and opened an exhibition for her in 1945. In 1946 Ernie O'Malley gave a lecture, 'The State of Painting in Ireland', Limerick City Gallery and Library, in which he said: 'Rouault had somewhat influenced another pupil of Gleizes and Lhote, Evie Hone. Gleizes was too rigorously abstract, too dominant as a teacher and it was difficult with him to avoid undue influence. The restraint and discipline of Cubism suited her clarity of mind as did its emphasis on selective colour and on the structural basis of composition have affected her subsequent work as did its emphasis. She developed her knowledge of form and of distortion to give coherence to expression. Most of all she felt, as others have felt that she was at ease with the people who thought creative art was important and who respected and loved it. Later she discovered her real talent which is that of a worker in stained glass and for close on ten years she had slowly built up a reputation until now she is possibly the most important artist in that medium in Western Europe. Recently she has finished six large windows for St Stanislaus College, in Tullabeg, Offaly. Her importance as an influence can be seen when her work, with its structural strength of rich colour, is compared with the facile line weakness of commercial church glass. It is rare now to find an artist who can create religious art of this unique quality without either rhetoric or sentimentality.' When Evie Hone died in 1955, he wrote a friend: 'She was the best glass worker in Western Europe. I had told her about some of the figure sculptures from the 12th to the 15th century. She had been able to make drawings and to feel this material in her glass work.' Ernie then assumed the mantel of organising a memorial exhibition of her work which ultimately came to pass in 1958 after his death.

gouache

signed with initials lower right; titled on Dawson Gallery label on reverse