€15,000 - €20,000
Pauline Bewick (1935-2022)
Lovers, Aubusson tapestry, signed, 118'' x 85'' (300cms x 216cms). (1)
On a seashore beneath the stars, with a lighthouse in the background casting its beams into the night sky, two lovers, eyes closed, are locked in a passionate embrace. Her legs wrapped around her lover’s torso, the woman caresses his head in her right hand, while her left arm reaches up to link hands. One of Bewick’s finest works, this tapestry sums up her affirmation of life and love.
Pauline Bewick was born in Northumbria and while most of her childhood was spent in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, she also attended the progressive Summerhill School in Suffolk. After studying at the National College of Art in Dublin, she embarked on a long and successful career as an artist, working in a variety of media, including watercolour, ceramics, tapestry and stained glass. Almost always working in a figurative style, through a lifetime of creativity, she created a body of work that forms a visual record of an extraordinary life. While living in London in the mid 1950's, Bewick kept up her connection with Ireland, holding her first one-person exhibition in Dublin in 1957. Three years later the BBC commissioned her to produce Little Jimmy, a television series for children. After travelling the world, in 1963 she settled back in her home county, Kerry, marrying Pat Melia and having two children, Poppy and Holly. A documentary film on Bewick’s life and work, made by David Shaw-Smith, was shown in 1985 on RTE and Channel 4, while an illustrated biography, Painting a Life, by James White, was published that same year. Bewick was elected a member of both the Royal Hibernian Academy and Aosdána, and served also as a board member of the National Gallery of Ireland. In 2016, President Mary McAleese opened The Seven Ages, an retrospective exhibition of Bewick's work, at the Waterford Institute of Technology. At this time, the artist donated a large collection of her works to the State, a third to be shown in Kerry, another third to be donated to Waterford city, while the final third formed a travelling exhibition. In 2015, her eightieth birthday was marked by an exhibition at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin, the publication of her autobiography 80:A Memoir, and another documentary on her art, made by Maurice Galway. Two years later, her painting The Philospher in the Desert was hung in the European Commission's Charlemagne building in Brussels. Bewick died at her home in Co. Kerry in 2022.
Dr. Peter Murray, 2022
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