Daniel O'Neill (1920-1974) Doves and a Girl Oil on board, 5...

Estimate

€40,000 - €60,000

Daniel O'Neill (1920-1974) Doves and a Girl Oil on board, 51 x 40.5cm (20 x 15¾'') Signed Exhibited: Dublin, Victor Waddington Galleries, 'Daniel O'Neill', 1949,(September), Cat. No. 1; Dndalk, Co. Louth, The Dundalk Art GAlleries, Opening Exhibition of Works by Irish Artists, (May) 1953, no. 32; Dublin, The Oriel Gallery, 100 Years of Irish Art, 1993; Dublin, Farmleigh Gallery, 'Daniel O'Neill: Romanticism and Friendships', (March-June) 2022; Belfast, Cultúrlann Gallery, 'Daniel O'Neill: Coming Home', 6 June 2022 - 15 August 2022, no. 2 Literature: Oliver Nulty, 100 Years of Irish Art: Oriel Gallery Silver Jubilee, 1968-1993, p. 96; Karen Reihill, 'Daniel O'Neill: Romanticism + Friendships' Frederick Gallery Bookshop, 2020,. Illustrated front cover and page 35. To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O’Neill in 2020, an exhibition and monograph dedicated to him, Daniel O’Neill: Romanticism and Friendships was planned to take place in OPW’s Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin. In 2015 this writer was approached by Daniel O’Neill’s daughter, Patricia Forster (1943- 2017) who asked if I would undertake to research her father as no one had yet published a monograph on him. Early on in my research, I chose this painting, Doves and a Girl for the front cover of the book as it represented the romantic qualities of his paintings, his technical ability as a painter and showed his muse, and wife Eileen, who after their first meeting featured in many of his works until his untimely death in 1974. Born into a working class Catholic family, Daniel O’Neill’s painting career coincided with the Second World War and as a result, there was little hope of him being able to travel to see the European Masters. The cultural atmosphere in Northern Ireland offered little encouragement to the aspiring young painter or his friends, George Campbell and Gerard Dillon. With barely a handful of outlets to exhibit their paintings, they turned to the Belfast Reference Library to learn about art and usedwhatever materials they could source locally to achieve their aim of being full time painters. They shared information and materials which consisted of tins of housepaint, scraps of cardboard, off-cuts of plywood, and hardback covers from large books to paint subjects. But after the Belfast Blitz there was little appetite to buy art in Northern Ireland. In 1945 O’Neill’s professional painting career began when he was taken up by Dublin dealer, Victor Waddington who paid him a regular stipend so he could give up his job as an electrician and paint full time. For the first time in his life, O’Neill’s dream of traveling to Europe to see the painters he had admired for years in reproductions in art books looked possible. His subjects during this period are largely autobiographical or express his own feelings about life and those around him. Women typically appear wearing clothes from another time or place, a device employed to focus the viewer’s attention on the prevailing mood or atmosphere. O’Neill met his future wife, Eileen Lyle, the daughter of a Protestant damask weaver in 1942 and after their marriage, they chose to live in Conlig, a Protestant village between Bangor and Newtownards in County Down, where O’Neill hoped the small local community would accept them knowing Eileen was a Protestant. In 1948 O’Neill’s planned three week sketching trip to Paris was extended to six months leaving Eileen alone to care for their child. But in the process of marrying O’Neill, Eileen had taken instruction in Catholicism and had to raise her child as a Catholic. Neither O’Neill or Eileen cared for religion but O’Neill’s mother was a devout Catholic and visits from a priest to their Conlig home did not go unnoticed. Patricia Forster said her father adored her mother but revealed her father’s prolonged absences from home and illness caused cracks in the marriage after he returned from Paris. O’Neill suffered from depression which caused him to turn to the numbing effects of alcohol. Patricia said in the context of the cultural differences in Belfast and the lack of understanding surrounding her father’s illness, there were long lasting consequences for the family. Exhibited in O’Neill’s 1949 exhibition, Doves and a Girl was painted not long after O’Neill’s return from Paris. This work belongs to a number of dignified portraits of Eileen which are emotionally charged reflecting the prevailing atmosphere in her life. Eileen’s sombre expression and the appearance of doves may symbolise O’Neill’s yearning for peace in the midst of the turmoil in their marriage or may point to Eileen’s heroic role as a mother protecting their child during O’Neill’s absence from home. In other iconic works from this period, The First Born and Birth in the Ulster Museum collection, the theme centres on Eileen and the powerful imagery of maternity. Karen Reihill, November, 2024