27

Kitty Wilmer O’Brien RHA PWCSI (1910-1982) SPRING, FITZWILLIAM SQUARE signed lower left oil on bo...

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA
Kitty Wilmer O’Brien RHA PWCSI (1910-1982) SPRING, FITZWILLIAM SQUARE signed lower left oil on bo...
Kitty Wilmer O’Brien RHA PWCSI (1910-1982)
SPRING, FITZWILLIAM SQUARE
signed lower left
oil on board
69 by 56cm., 27 by 22in.
Exhibited:
’Exhibition of Paintings of Kitty Wilmer O’Brien and T. G. Wilson’, Dublin
Painters’ Gallery, 1951, catalogue no. 15 (£20-0-0)
Kitty Wilmer O’Brien was a well-known and respected exhibitor in Dublin art
circles for over fifty years. She entered the RHA schools in 1926 and
distinguished herself there by winning prizes for drawing and painting. In 1933
she won the coveted Taylor Scholarship, which enabled her to go to London to
study at the Slade. Three years later she married surgeon Dr Brendan O’Brien,
son of her former mentor, Dermod O’Brien PRHA. After a period spent abroad they
settled in Dublin, at 65 Fitzwilliam Square, from where she submitted works to
the Society of Dublin Painters, the RHA and the WCSI, of which she was President
from 1962 to 1981. The view depicted in this painting is from the first floor
drawing room of no. 65, from which can be glimpsed Jack Yeats’ home, across the
square at no. 18. Other artists who lived on the square include Mainie Jellett
at no. 36 and at no. 3 the surgeon-painter Thomas G. Wilson HRHA, whose works
were exhibited alongside Wilmer O’Brien’s at the Dublin Painters’ Gallery on St
Stephen’s Green. Spring, Fitzwilliam Square was used as the basis of an etching
which Wilmer O’Brien used annually for the family Christmas card and which her
children used to colour in year after year in the advent season. A preparatory
sketch for the work is still in the O’Brien family collection.
€6,000-€8,000 (£4,200-£5,600 sterling approx.)