Maud Gonne (1866-1953) "Self Portrait," c 1906 pencil and ...

Hammer

€15,000

Maud Gonne (1866-1953)

"Self Portrait," c 1906 pencil and gouache on paper, approx. 24cms x 19cms (9 1/"" x 7 1/2"), framed.

Depicting Gonne’s head and shoulders, with voluminous hair, this drawing on light brown paper is also signed with initials ‘M G’, on the lower left. The drawing is highlighted with slight touches of red watercolour, accentuating the lips, and white gouache, to emphasize the eyes and nose. The drawing captures Gonne’s classical good looks and the soulful expression that so enraptured William Butler Yeats.



These drawings, from the Yeats family collection, are almost certainly those referred to in letters written in 1905 and 1906 by Maud Gonne to William Butler Yeats. In late 1905, she wrote “I am going to send you a little drawing of Iseult I have done . . It is Iseult with her hair twisted up for the bath, but is like her but makes her look older than she is.’ (See Lot 81) In March 1906 she mentions another drawing: “In my portrait I wanted to give the idea of a face that has outlived age and has no age.” [Anna MacBride White & A Norman Jeffares (ed.) The Gonne-Yeats Letters, (W. W. Norton NY, 1993); letters 165, 171; pp. 221-7] Evidently given as gifts by Maud Gonne to her long-time admirer W B. Yeats, the two drawings remained with the Yeats family for many years.

 

Born in Farnham, England in 1866, Maud Gonne came from family with connections to Co. Mayo. Her mother came from a wealthy family of wine merchants; her father, an army officer and later a diplomat, was stationed for a time in Ireland. Although her early childhood was spent in Dublin, on the death of her mother in 1871, Gonne was sent to boarding school in France and five years later, her father was posted there as a diplomat. Further postings followed, to India, and then in 1882 back to Ireland, where, influenced by evictions and the Land Wars, both father and daughter became politically radicalised. After the death of her father in 1886, Gonne lived in London with relatives, intending to become an actress. Having contracted tuberculosis however, she returned to France for treatment, where she met and fell in love with Lucien Millevoye, a right-wing journalist and politician. While she studied art in Paris, at the Academie Julian, and with Joseph Granié (1861-1916), few works by Gonne survive, although she did submit at least one work to the annual Salon exhibition. The two present drawings reveal the influence of Granié, a minor Symbolist artist from Toulouse, who often used tinted paper and depicted his sitters in profile (his portrait of Yvette Guilbert is in Musee d’Orsay).  Inheriting a fortune brought Gonne freedom: she travelled first to Russia, then returned to Ireland where she befriended the veteran Fenian John O’Leary, campaigned against evictions and worked for the release of political prisoners.

 

Courted by William Butler Yeats, who she met in January 1889 at Bedford Park in London, Gonne shared the poet’s belief in the existence of occult and spiritual worlds, but maintained that his creative talents were improved by her rejections of his proposals of marriage. She lived a life unconventional for the time, and the following year in Paris, having got back together with Millevoye, had a son, Georges, who died when a young child. Her second child Iseult, conceived for spiritualist reasons in the tomb of Georges, was born in 1894, but Millevoye and Gonne then separated. For many years Gonne did not publicly acknowledge Iseult as her daughter and thereafter focused on Irish nationalist causes, making a lecture tour of the United States, editing a short-lived newspaper L’Irlande libre, and setting up an L’Association Irlandaise in Paris. She was equally active in Ireland, and four years later founded “Inghindhe na hEireann” or Daughters of Erin. Gonne was also one of the founders of the Irish National Council, which evolved into Sinn Fein. In 1902 she played the lead role in Yeats’ play Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Back in Paris the following year, she disappointed Yeats by converting to Catholicism and marrying Major John MacBride. While they did have one son, Sean, their turbulent relationship attracted unfavourable publicity, and the marriage came an end when MacBride was executed after the 1916 Rising. Two years later, along with Countess Markievicz, Gonne was imprisoned in Holloway Prison, for pro-German activities. During the 1920’s she remained active in Republican politics; her house in Stephen’s Green was ransacked by Free State troops and she was imprisoned again for short periods. Like Yeats, she was an admirer of Fascism. Through the years of Gonne’s marriage and after, Yeats continued to worship her, regarding both her and Iseult as his creative muses, inspiring him to write poems and plays. Both women held him in high regard, but were unwilling to commit further. His 1893 poem ‘The White Birds’ was the first of many inspired by Gonne, while his ‘To a Child Dancing in the Wind’ (1914) was dedicated to Iseult, who six years later married the writer Francis Stuart. Gonne and her family lived in Dublin, at Roebuck House, Clonskeagh, until her death in 1953.

Dr. Peter Murray, & Cian O'Hegarty, 2022