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Aloysius C. (1850-1929) BRETON WOMAN

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 40,000.00 EUR
Aloysius C.   (1850-1929) BRETON WOMAN
Aloysius C. (1850-1929) BRETON WOMAN SEATED IN INTERIOR, KNITTING signed lower right oil on canvas, relined 66 by 46cm., 26 by 18in. Provenance: James Adam Salesrooms, Dublin, 11 December 1986, lot 64; Whence purchased by the current owner If the innumerable painters who painted them are anything to go by, Breton women knitted incessantly. Clearly, many artists were taken with the pose, but O’Kelly, in particular, seems to have adopted it as his very own. Such figures feature in Respite from the Midday Sun, Breton Women by the Fireside and Brittany Courtship, among many others. From her coiffe, we can tell that the painting was executed in the early twentieth century. Although she is an attractive young woman, painted with considerable specificity, and would have been readily identifiable at the time, this is not a portrait in the conventional sense. Her absorption in her task is the real subject of the painting. Unlike many of O'Kelly’s portraits, the young woman is specifically located, in this instance in a well-delineated Breton interior, thereby rendering this a genre painting rather than a portrait. In this regard, the painting resembles Breton Woman Cleaning Pans painted in Pont-Aven in 1909. The scale of the painting is such that it affords the artist the spatial capacity to focus on the setting and the accoutrements of the interior. Although the painting is quite dark, the carved oak lit clos, the large ceramic ewer, the chair and the pannier are clearly discernible and painted with O’Kelly’s consummate verve. These still-life elements are important features in the painting, and show O'Kelly’s considerable skill to effect. Dr Niamh O'Sullivan, Dublin, October 2005