Aloysius O'Kelly RHA (1853 - 1936) The Christening Party (1...

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€10,000 - €15,000

Aloysius O'Kelly RHA (1853 - 1936) The Christening Party (1908) Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 91.4cm (27 x 36'') Signed and dated 1908 (lower right) Provenance: The Artist's family; With Gorry Gallery, Dublin 1981; Collection of Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., thence by descent Exhibition: Dublin, Gorry Gallery, February 1981, No. 13; Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, The Irish Impressionists, 1984, No. 25. Literature: Niamh O’Sullivan, Gorry Gallery, An Exhibition and Sale of 18th - 21st Century Irish Paintings, 2024; O’Sullivan, Gorry Gallery, An Exhibition of 18th - 21st Century Irish Paintings & Sculpture, 2011; O’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire, Field Day, 2010; O’Sullivan Re-orientations: Aloysius O'Kelly: painting politics and popular culture, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1999; Julian Campbell, The Irish Impressionists, National Gallery of Ireland,1984. In 1874, O’Kelly became one of the first Irish artists to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was admitted to the prestigious studio of Jean-Léon Gérome; separately he studied portraiture with Léon Bonnat; in addition, his early experiments in plein-air painting in Brittany were the foundations on which his work evolved. There is a striking stylistic cohesion between O’Kelly’s paintings set in Brittany in two phases, the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, but these converge in two almost identical paintings dated 1908 and 1909 called The Christening Party and L’auberge. By coincidence, both have come up for sale within a few months of each other. O’Kelly tended to date paintings destined for major exhibition venues such as the Royal Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Paris Salon. And indeed he did exhibit a painting in the Salon in 1909 called L’auberge. The Christening Party thus predates the all-but-identical L’auberge. One surmises that he intended this painting for the Salon, but found an early buyer, and so painted a second version for Paris the following year. The painting features a group of adults joyously holding their glasses of cider aloft. This version was given the title The Christening Party when it was exhibited in the Irish Impressionists exhibition in the National Gallery in 1984, although it not clear that it is indeed a christening, as the child must be about two-years of age, and the focus is more widely dispersed: the oval disposition is designed to lead the eye around the painting in an inclusive way. O’Kelly was the first Irish artist to discover Brittany in the 1870s and was influential in drawing other Irish artists such as Thomas Hovenden and Augustus Burke there. Moreover, in recognizing the historical, cultural and ethnic connections between Ireland and Brittany, O’Kelly was at pains to counter the negative stereotyping of marginalized people. The American critic, E.L. Wakeman noted that '[t]hrough the grime and slime of their hard cold lives a few things must stand luminously revealed …. the people of Ireland and those of Brittany are the closest of kin and from one common Celtic stock, the affection and family ties, and to neighbourhood and communal yearnings, find here universal expression to a degree that almost approaches pathos'. (Wakeman's Wanderings, Weekly Inter Ocean, 7 January 1890). Wakeman went on to cite their respective ‘love of and reverence for babies’, as shines through here. O’Kelly’s paintings of both Irish and Breton people insistently reflect a hard-working, healthy and dignified people, as projected here. O’Kelly moved around Brittany over more than a fifty-year period. From the distinctive clothes, the setting in this painting can be identified as the pays de Rosporden (around Concarneau and the Fôret de Fouesnant): the women wear white linen coiffes and wide collars, dark skirts, fitted bodices, embroidered waistcoats, and heavy wooden sabots; the men woollen jackets, waistcoats, bragoù-bras, black gaiters and felt broad-rimmed hats. The table and the rush-woven Breton chairs are timeless, but other aspects identify the painting as early twentieth century, notably the visible hair of the women (previously, no self-respecting girl would have herself painted with her hair even partially uncovered). Over time, O’Kelly’s Breton landscapes and seascapes became increasingly and iridescently impressionistic, while his interior scenes retained their structure and hark back to Dutch seventeenth-century interiors and, more contemporaneously, the work of American artist, Robert Wylie. Executed towards the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the dark interior of The Christening Party, connects these paintings to a considerably earlier form of genre painting, characterized by academic draughtsmanship and conventional painting skills. Notwithstanding their archaism, the compression of so many figures in The Christening Party into such a confined space demanded considerable skill, in addition to which he countered the apparent informality of the figures by granting to each an individualised physiognomy. The loose yet controlled brushwork, broad values, and strong contrasts evident in the portraits are a testament to Bonnat's realist teaching. The treatment of the still life on the upper shelf verges on the semi abstract and contrast with the narrative details that include the man pouring the drink with his left hand on his companion's shoulder, the young girl wiping the bowl, the man lighting his pipe, the shadowy figure in the background squatting low to tap the cider. The painting is full of gesture and expression. Notwithstanding the dark interior, the play of light on form, on the bottles and glasses, on the rugged furniture, on the animated faces of the figures, is typical of O'Kelly, an artist who painted sometimes separately, sometimes coterminously tightly and precisely, and loosely and freely. Prof. Niamh O'Sullivan, October 2024