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Louis le Brocquy
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS
Lot 10
Current Bid:
€50,000
Bid History:
1 Bids
Estimate:
€70,000 - €100,000
Ending:
18:06:45 on 28/05/2024
Louis le Brocquy HRHA, 1916-2012
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS (1975)
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2" x 27 1/2" (70 x 70cm), signed and dated 1975.
Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, April 1976 (label verso); The Estates of Dr. John & Hestie O'Driscoll dec... Read more
Lot 10
Louis le Brocquy
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS
DVTV Click Here To View VideoIMAGE OF W.B. YEATS (1975)
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2" x 27 1/2" (70 x 70cm), signed and dated 1975.
Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, April 1976 (label verso); The Estates of Dr. John & Hestie O'Driscoll dec... Read more
Lot 10
Louis le Brocquy
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS
Estimate:
€70,000 - €100,000
Louis le Brocquy HRHA, 1916-2012
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS (1975)
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2" x 27 1/2" (70 x 70cm), signed and dated 1975.
Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, April 1976 (label verso); The Estates of Dr. John & Hestie O'Driscoll dec'd, Kildare, Ireland and hence by descent to the present owner.
Image of W.B Yeats is a painting that the artist in particular had a very high opinion of, as evidenced by its extensive list of exhibition history and also personal correspondences from le Brocquy to the owners, John and Hestie O'Driscoll. As a collector of important international Modernism, Dr. John O'Driscoll's collection included works by Kees van Dongen, Paul Signac, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Alberto Giacometti, William Turnbull and Patrick Heron as well as tapestries, paintings and sculpture by leading Irish artists. John O' Driscoll's education as a collector can be deduced from his personal notebooks, which record an almost scientific analysis of the works of well-known painting's by Cezanne and others, along with his line and colour studies of certain aspects of their artworks. The late Oliver Dowling once recalled he was "in a space above his peers as a collector in Ireland in the 1970's".
Exhibited: The Dawson Gallery, Louis le Brocquy: Studies Towards an Image of WB Yeats, Dublin, Nov/ Dec 1975; Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Louis le Brocquy: Studies Toward and Image of WB Yeats, Belfast, 1976; Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork 1976; Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville Paris, Louis le Brocquy 'A la recherche de Yeats', Paris 15th October - 28th November 1976; Edinburgh International Festival (Demarco Gallery), '77 Exhibition; New York State Museum, Louis le Brocquy and the Celtic Head Image, Albany N.Y, 1981; Boston Colleg, Mass. 1982; Westfield College, Mass, 1982; Palais des Beaux Arts, Charleroi, 1982; Louis le Brocquy: Images 1975-1987, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin 1987; Ulster Museum, Belfast Nov/ Dec 1987; Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide March 1988; Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne June-July 1988; Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane July-Aug 1988; Museum of Modern Art, Louis le Brocquy: Images, Singles and Multiple 1957-1990, Kamakura, Japan Jan-Feb 1991; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Louis le Brocquy, Paintings, 1939-1996, Dublin, 16th October 1996 - 16 February 1997; National Gallery of Ireland, Louis le Brocquy, Portrait Heads, Dublin, 4th November 2006 - 17th January 2007.
Literature: Louis le Brocquy: Images 1975-1987, Arts Council of Ireland, 1987, full-page col illustration (detail) p.10; W.B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II, R.F. Foster, Oxford University Press, 2003, cover illustration; Portrait of an Irish Artist: Louis le Brocquy, Irish America Magazine, June/Jul 2011.
Louis le Brocquy, perhaps the most esteemed Irish artist of his generation, was preoccupied with the human head as far back as 1964, when he became fascinated by the ancient Celtic tradition of the head as a magic box which contained the spirit. His paintings of generic 'ancestral' heads developed over the following decade. Always interested in the human condition, these austere paintings searched for an abstract concept of humanity that went beyond the identification of physical features.
However, in the mid-1970s, triggered by a commission by a Swedish gallery owner to contribute to a portrait exhibition of Nobel Prize winners, le Brocquy's focus shifted dramatically, a transition from his generic ancestral heads to the renowned portrait series of "Head Images". These studies, mostly of literary figures whose writings elevated them to the status of icons of Irish culture, included Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and, of course, W.B. Yeats. Image of W.B. Yeats (1975) is an early work from this period, undoubtedly one of his finest. In a 1987 handwritten letter to its owner, le Brocquy personally urged her to lend the work to an important touring exhibition, as he considered the painting to be "a significant part of this series." This unusual gesture is testament to the artist's high regard for it.
In this painting we find a young, forceful W.B. Yeats, but it is fascinating to see how the artist balances a convincing description of facial features with a desire to dissolve them. The image of Yeats slowly reveals itself but, just at the point where features begin to solidify, the artist lets go again. It tempts the poetic imagination of the viewer: suggesting and hinting rather than describing. In that respect, there is a continuous line that links paintings like this one to the earlier ancestral heads. In both, le Brocquy searches for a more general sense of human presence, the essence of "being" that hovers below the surface. When he began to paint identifiable portraits, like Yeats, the artist recognised the futility of trying to make a single definitive image, something static and fixed. He understood that our perception of someone like Yeats comes from multiple sources over time, filtered by memory. In preparation, le Brocquy looked at a vast number of photographs, trying to discover an image that underlies Yeats's ever-changing external features. This painting embodies that sense of flux, briefly (but convincingly) capturing his fleeting physical appearance but going beyond that to reveal the subject's enormous presence, his intensity.
The surface of this painting is wonderfully seductive - ethereal at the edges, becoming denser at the core. The constant play between opaque and transparent elements gives the work a luscious fluidity. Paintings like this one also have a solemnity and grandeur that come from le Brocquy using a visual format that draws on religious art. There isn't the slightest hint of informality about this Yeats portrait. There is a formal symmetry, with an aura of light around the head in the tradition of medieval religious art. Extraneous details have been eliminated and the background is simplified so that all the colour, texture and emotional intensity is concentrated on the head of Yeats, that magic box that holds his creative spirit.
Dr Frances Ruane. HRHA
April 2024
IMAGE OF W.B. YEATS (1975)
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2" x 27 1/2" (70 x 70cm), signed and dated 1975.
Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, April 1976 (label verso); The Estates of Dr. John & Hestie O'Driscoll dec'd, Kildare, Ireland and hence by descent to the present owner.
Image of W.B Yeats is a painting that the artist in particular had a very high opinion of, as evidenced by its extensive list of exhibition history and also personal correspondences from le Brocquy to the owners, John and Hestie O'Driscoll. As a collector of important international Modernism, Dr. John O'Driscoll's collection included works by Kees van Dongen, Paul Signac, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Alberto Giacometti, William Turnbull and Patrick Heron as well as tapestries, paintings and sculpture by leading Irish artists. John O' Driscoll's education as a collector can be deduced from his personal notebooks, which record an almost scientific analysis of the works of well-known painting's by Cezanne and others, along with his line and colour studies of certain aspects of their artworks. The late Oliver Dowling once recalled he was "in a space above his peers as a collector in Ireland in the 1970's".
Exhibited: The Dawson Gallery, Louis le Brocquy: Studies Towards an Image of WB Yeats, Dublin, Nov/ Dec 1975; Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Louis le Brocquy: Studies Toward and Image of WB Yeats, Belfast, 1976; Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork 1976; Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville Paris, Louis le Brocquy 'A la recherche de Yeats', Paris 15th October - 28th November 1976; Edinburgh International Festival (Demarco Gallery), '77 Exhibition; New York State Museum, Louis le Brocquy and the Celtic Head Image, Albany N.Y, 1981; Boston Colleg, Mass. 1982; Westfield College, Mass, 1982; Palais des Beaux Arts, Charleroi, 1982; Louis le Brocquy: Images 1975-1987, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin 1987; Ulster Museum, Belfast Nov/ Dec 1987; Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide March 1988; Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne June-July 1988; Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane July-Aug 1988; Museum of Modern Art, Louis le Brocquy: Images, Singles and Multiple 1957-1990, Kamakura, Japan Jan-Feb 1991; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Louis le Brocquy, Paintings, 1939-1996, Dublin, 16th October 1996 - 16 February 1997; National Gallery of Ireland, Louis le Brocquy, Portrait Heads, Dublin, 4th November 2006 - 17th January 2007.
Literature: Louis le Brocquy: Images 1975-1987, Arts Council of Ireland, 1987, full-page col illustration (detail) p.10; W.B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II, R.F. Foster, Oxford University Press, 2003, cover illustration; Portrait of an Irish Artist: Louis le Brocquy, Irish America Magazine, June/Jul 2011.
Louis le Brocquy, perhaps the most esteemed Irish artist of his generation, was preoccupied with the human head as far back as 1964, when he became fascinated by the ancient Celtic tradition of the head as a magic box which contained the spirit. His paintings of generic 'ancestral' heads developed over the following decade. Always interested in the human condition, these austere paintings searched for an abstract concept of humanity that went beyond the identification of physical features.
However, in the mid-1970s, triggered by a commission by a Swedish gallery owner to contribute to a portrait exhibition of Nobel Prize winners, le Brocquy's focus shifted dramatically, a transition from his generic ancestral heads to the renowned portrait series of "Head Images". These studies, mostly of literary figures whose writings elevated them to the status of icons of Irish culture, included Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and, of course, W.B. Yeats. Image of W.B. Yeats (1975) is an early work from this period, undoubtedly one of his finest. In a 1987 handwritten letter to its owner, le Brocquy personally urged her to lend the work to an important touring exhibition, as he considered the painting to be "a significant part of this series." This unusual gesture is testament to the artist's high regard for it.
In this painting we find a young, forceful W.B. Yeats, but it is fascinating to see how the artist balances a convincing description of facial features with a desire to dissolve them. The image of Yeats slowly reveals itself but, just at the point where features begin to solidify, the artist lets go again. It tempts the poetic imagination of the viewer: suggesting and hinting rather than describing. In that respect, there is a continuous line that links paintings like this one to the earlier ancestral heads. In both, le Brocquy searches for a more general sense of human presence, the essence of "being" that hovers below the surface. When he began to paint identifiable portraits, like Yeats, the artist recognised the futility of trying to make a single definitive image, something static and fixed. He understood that our perception of someone like Yeats comes from multiple sources over time, filtered by memory. In preparation, le Brocquy looked at a vast number of photographs, trying to discover an image that underlies Yeats's ever-changing external features. This painting embodies that sense of flux, briefly (but convincingly) capturing his fleeting physical appearance but going beyond that to reveal the subject's enormous presence, his intensity.
The surface of this painting is wonderfully seductive - ethereal at the edges, becoming denser at the core. The constant play between opaque and transparent elements gives the work a luscious fluidity. Paintings like this one also have a solemnity and grandeur that come from le Brocquy using a visual format that draws on religious art. There isn't the slightest hint of informality about this Yeats portrait. There is a formal symmetry, with an aura of light around the head in the tradition of medieval religious art. Extraneous details have been eliminated and the background is simplified so that all the colour, texture and emotional intensity is concentrated on the head of Yeats, that magic box that holds his creative spirit.
Dr Frances Ruane. HRHA
April 2024
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In the event of a tied bid, the preference will be given to the bid submitted first. The second bidder will receive immediate notification of being outbid.
PLEASE BID EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT.
In order to allow rival bidders the opportunity to respond to a late bid the following extensions will apply:
IF A BID IS RECEIVED WITHIN THE FINAL 45 SECONDS OF THE COUNTDOWN THE CLOCK WILL RESET TO 60 SECONDS.
At any point you can leave a maximum bid, representing the highest price you are prepared to pay for a particular lot. Bidding only advances when there is competition from a rival bidder. In that case the system bids on your behalf, only up to the maximum if required. All bids are relayed to you be email, along with notification if you have been outbid.
All maximum bids are confidential and not disclosed. The system will endeavor to purchase the lot for you for the least price. Bids are subject to buyer’s premium of 25% (incl vat), with no additional charges.
In the event of a tied bid, the preference will be given to the bid submitted first. The second bidder will receive immediate notification of being outbid.
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