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36

Frances J. Kelly ARHA (active 1929-1950s)

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 EUR
Frances J. Kelly ARHA (active 1929-1950s)
Frances J. Kelly ARHA (active 1929-1950s) AS SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (DESIGN FOR A MURAL DECORATION) signed lower right pen and ink with gouache 28 by 130cm., 11 by 51in. Provenance: Maurice Edward Dear, antiques & fine art dealer, Southampton, UK Born in Co. Louth, Frances Kelly studied at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. In 1932, upon becoming the first student to win the Henry Higgins travelling scholarship she went to Paris, studying there for three years under the cubist painter Léopold Survage (1879-1968) and attending various other schools there of drawing and painting. On her return to Dublin she exhibited with the Dublin Painters and at the Dawson Gallery, also contributing to the RHA and the Living Art exhibitions. In the mid-1940s she married the eminent Irish statesman, F. H. Boland (1904-1985), who was then Assistant Secretary to the Department of External Affairs. As Boland's career progressed, leading Frances and their five children firstly to London when Boland was appointed Ambassador to Britain in 1950 and later to New York, where he was the first permanent Irish representative to the UN (and later President of the General Assembly), Kelly seems to have stopped exhibiting her work. The present piece is thought to be a design for an important series of wall frescoes depicting scenes of Irish labour which were commissioned in the 1940s for the Four Provinces building in Harcourt Street. The murals were completed by Nano Reid, but were sadly destroyed in 1988 by developers. A series of newspaper articles relating to these are available on request.€3000-€4000 (IR £2300-£3100 approx.)
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