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Fine and Rare Wines
21 Nov 2009, San Francisco and Los Angeles |
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23 Nov 2009, 220 San Bruno Avenue, San Francisco |
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24 Nov 2009, Chester |
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24 Nov 2009, Knightsbridge |
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24 Nov 2009, KNOWLE |
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25 Nov 2009, New Bond Street |
The Merchiston Collection of Fine Portrait Miniatures, The Property of Mrs Eleanor Hamilton
25 Nov 2009, Knightsbridge |
Fine Portrait Miniatures
25 Nov 2009, Knightsbridge |
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25 Nov 2009, New Bond Street |
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Inside his head
"When I paint images of the head, I never have the person before me," said Louis Le Brocquy, the most celebrated Irish artist of his generation. Now aged 91, throughout his career Le Brocquy painted a series of cultural figureheads: James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Francis Bacon and Bono, Ireland's most famous contemporary export. However, even if he had had the opportunity to paint these figures from life, Le Brocquy deliberately passed up the chance. As he declared in an interview in 1992, "Somehow that would impede all imaginative freedom. I prefer to use photographs and recollection... The painting itself emerges spontaneously, vaguely prompted by the photograph or sketch before me. I try neither to impose nor copy, but to stay on the lookout for what may happen." He then added, "Accident is important. In it lies discovery."
Study for Reconstructed Head of Samuel Beckett, from 1965, is one of the first in this series and it was also the first portrait that Le Brocquy painted of the enigmatic playwright. Although the artist met Beckett through a mutual contact at Trinity College, Dublin, becoming firm friends with him until the latter's death in 1989, at the time of this work Le Brocquy had yet to meet the playwright. Reconstructed Head, in which Le Brocquy evoked Beckett using photographs and memory, is not only the first of a subject that he later revisited, it also set a precedent stylistically for what was to follow. Using faint strokes and daubs of colour, Le Brocquy produces an ethereal rendering of Beckett, who emerges from the white background, at once part of it and yet also distinct. But as the artist told Anne Madden, his wife and biographer, "I'm not making a statement at all, you know, I'm simply trying to discover, to uncover, aspects of the Beckettness of Beckett."
Louis Le Brocquy was born in Dublin in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising and, therefore turbulent times. His interest in art began as a young man, when he developed a fascination for Old Master paintings. He travelled widely and visited the major European collections, where he developed a lasting admiration for Titian, Rembrandt, Velazquez and El Greco in particular. Indeed, the influence of Spanish painting would remain a feature of his work throughout his career, especially in his tonal use of greys and whites. On his return to Dublin in 1943, Le Brocquy became a founding member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, a forum to promote contemporary Irish art. Shortly after, he moved to London and was quickly recognised as a formidable artist, showing at the Leicester Galleries. This instantaneous critical acclaim led to his first one-man show at Gimpel Fils in 1947.
The artist has a number of distinct periods within his career. His early figurative and representational work was followed by a series of 'tinker paintings' and more apocalyptic subject matter such as the political climate of the Cold War. Then in the 1950s, his palette became greyer and increasingly melancholic, yet compositionally more dynamic. An angular simplicity entered his work as the artist experimented with abstraction. His first gallery exhibition in Ireland took place in 1951, at the eminent Victor Waddington Galleries, and several years later he began his trademark preoccupation with the colour white. It was prompted by a life-changing moment that occurred while on holiday in Spain. Le Brocquy noticed some figures in front of a whitewashed wall that appeared to be absorbed through the brilliance of the sunlight, and he said that after this experience he would never perceive human presence in quite the same way again.
Le Brocquy's artistic achievement almost spans a century and rarely is an artist so relentlessly inventive and continuously celebrated throughout his career. He is one of a handful of Irish artists in collections such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Tate in London. After seven consecutive decades of professional success, it is a testament to his extraordinary talent and the love of his craft that Le Brocquy continues to work and re-invent his aesthetic today.
Penny Day is a Specialist in the Modern British and Irish Art Department.
Enquiries: Penny Day +44 (0) 20 7468 8366
penny.day@bonhams.com
Bonhams, founded in 1793, is one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. The present company was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son and Neale UK. In August 2002, the company acquired Butterfields, the principal firm of auctioneers on the West Coast of America and in August 2003, Goodmans, a leading Australian fine art and antiques auctioneer with salerooms in Sydney, joined the Bonhams Group of Companies. Today, Bonhams is one of the largest one of the largest and fastest growing auction houses in the world. It offers more sales than any of its rivals, through two major salerooms in London: New Bond Street, and Knightsbridge, and a further 10 throughout the UK. Sales are also held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston in the USA; and Switzerland, France, Monaco, and Australia and Hong Kong. Bonhams has a worldwide network of offices and regional representatives in 25 countries offering sales advice and valuation services in 50 specialist areas. For a full listing of upcoming sales, plus details of Bonhams specialist departments, go to www.bonhams.com
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