€7,000 - €10,000
Aloysius O’Kelly RHA (1856-1936) Interior with Two Girls Oil on canvas 91 x 73cm (35¾ x 28¾”) Signed Literature: Niamh O’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire, Dublin, Field Day, 2010. Throughout his life, O’Kelly returned to a series of paintings of young girls in which there is a sense of continuity, indeed a familial resemblance, as if of the same girl growing a little older. In Blowing Bubbles, A Hearty Breakfast and Seated Girl with Hydrangea Blossoms, the generic smocks connect the sitters, and the light red hair would suggest a common Celtic ethnic origin that could be Irish, Breton or American. Moreover, the informality of the portraits intimate perhaps a relationship with the artist. The paintings are undated (probably around 1910-15) and placeless – studies in childhood charm rather than location. The fourth painting in this series, however, depicts two girls, one of whom we recognize from the other paintings. The scale here is such that one would normally associate with a commission of significance – girls from a wealthy family – if it were not for the simplicity of their dress and setting. O’Kelly is not interested in the social status of these girls – there is no attempt to contextualise them – the subject is their mood and intimacy. The melancholy is affecting; an older girl comforting a younger, tenderly, suggests a backstory. The children seem to speak eloquently of loss. An rumour concerned with O’Kelly’s private life alleged a relationship with a French nurse in New York, but neither that nor the additional speculation that O’Kelly had a daughter have been confirmed, indeed he is recorded in the US censuses as unmarried (although that is not necessarily proof that he was not a father). Aloysius was very close to his militant republican brother James J. O’Kelly whose political activities – in which he embroiled Aloysius – necessitated extreme secrecy, and many aliases. Additionally, amid the many personal scandals James occasioned was a series of women and, at least, one bigamous marriage in which Aloysius was decoy, one of the wives living as Mrs A. O’Kelly in Paris This wife died tragically young having given birth to her second child (and in these annals, there is mention of third child). After moving to the US in 1895, Aloysius was closely involved in the life of a nephew, James Herbert, probably a son of his brother James. And in this family, in 1900 there occurred the mysterious death of two babies and their mother. The 1910 census then records Herbert living with his (second) wife Jeanie, and daughter Jessie. Given the recurrence of the sitter, consistent with Jessie’s age over a four or five year period, it is likely she is one of his sitters in this series of paintings. In the interstices between academic painting and Impressionism resided naturalism and O’Kelly was at his best in this space. In his early summers in Brittany, he was taken with the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage who spent some time there in the early 1880s. Bastien-Lepage’s dictum – to remain true to nature – was core to O’Kelly’s work. Evolving from the Realist tradition of Millet and Courbet, both Bastien-Lepage and O’Kelly shared a commitment to naturalistic landscapes peopled with honest workers who are depicted with authenticity and dignity. And under the French artist’s influence, O’Kelly lightened his palette and broke his brushstroke. As we see here, both artists worked close to his model, and on the same level, creating a marked intimacy between himself and his sitter, an intimacy that is extended to the viewer. The verticality, the closeness of the painter to the subject and the high horizon, have the effect of eliminating the traditional vanishing point and tilting the sitters parallel to the picture plane. O’Kelly clearly assimilated both stylistic and technical features of Bastien-Lepage, in effect, blending academic, realist and plein-air elements into a beguiling rural naturalism. Niamh O'Sullivan, October 2024
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