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Deborah Brown (b.1927) MAN SEA AND SKY signed lower right; original inscribed label on reverse oi...

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Deborah Brown (b.1927) MAN SEA AND SKY signed lower right; original inscribed label on reverse oi...
Deborah Brown (b.1927)
MAN SEA AND SKY
signed lower right; original inscribed label on reverse
oil on board
46 by 56cm., 18 by 22in.
Provenance:
Collection of Vincent Ferguson
Painted circa 1951-1953, Man Sea and Sky is an extremely early example of
Deborah Brown’s work, predating her move into abstract painting and later
sculpture. Born in Belfast, she enrolled at the Belfast College of Art in 1946,
spending only twelve months there before switching to the National College of
Art in Dublin. Upon completing her formal studies in 1950 she went to Paris for
a year, absorbing the lessons of the Old Masters whilst simultaneously
stimulated by contemporary trends in art. Upon returning to Belfast in 1951 she
met with great success when the Arts Council of Northern Ireland gave her a solo
show in their gallery at Donegall Place. Anne Crookshank has noted of Brown’s
work of this period: "her painting was still realist, if already notably
simplified, and great attention was focused on the forms created by the
brushstrokes"1. In this sense it was typical of much of the best work being
produced in Belfast at the time by artists such as Basil Blackshaw and T. P.
Flanagan, who in turn were influenced by the slightly older generation of
artists who had styled themselves in the thirties as the Ulster Unit. Indeed,
Man Sea and Sky bears comparison with both Blackshaw’s similarly titled Men, Sea
and Moon of 1952, and with Daniel O’Neill and Colin Middleton’s work of the late
forties and early fifties in which figures are pressed up close to the picture
plane and brooding dark colours lend the scenes a poetic romanticism.
1 Deborah Brown: A Selected Exhibition of Works Completed Between 1947 – 1982,
Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1982, unpaginated
€4,000-€6,000 (£2,800-£4,200 sterling approx.)