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Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) SWANS ON THE LAGAN signed lower left oil on canvas 51 by 69cm....

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Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) SWANS ON THE LAGAN signed lower left oil on canvas 51 by 69cm....
Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974)
SWANS ON THE LAGAN
signed lower left
oil on canvas
51 by 69cm., 20 by 27in.
Provenance:
‘Irish Paintings’, James Adam Salerooms in association with Bonhams, Dublin 1
June 1989, lot 119 (price realised: IR£42,000 - stg£36,000);
Private collection, Surrey
Exhibited:
RHA, Dublin, 1945, catalogue no. 3 (£52-10-0)
Frank McKelvey was a pragmatic painter, reacting to things as they happened, not
bothered by theory or dogma. For him painting represented a sense of discovery,
similar to that of the children in this composition, superbly observed and
depicted as they play with the swans. Writing in 1925 the English critic J. B.
Meehan commented that McKelvey’s views and conversation were "as fresh and
bright as his pictures" 1. In the artist’s own words, he said, "painting is all
great fun"2. Both comments are applicable to McKelvey’s whole career and ably
describe the mood in Swans on the Lagan.
The picture is similar to a number of others on this theme which McKelvey
painted at different times in his career, the setting often being the pond at
Woodvale Park, near to where he grew up, the lake at Hillsborough, the pond in
St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, or, as here, the river Lagan and its environs. The
handling of paint in this work and the slightly dramatic quality of the light,
suggest a date of execution of around 1944-1945. It is almost certainly,
therefore, the picture of this title that McKelvey exhibited at the RHA in 1945.
1 Quoted in J. B. Meehan, ‘Two Ulster Artists’, Colour, December 1925, p. 12
(Meehan’s other subject in this article was James Humbert Craig)
2 Ibid.
Dr S. B. Kennedy,
Belfast, 2004
€70,000-€90,000 (£47,000-£60,000 sterling approx.)