FINE ARTS: The opening shot in the spring season's Irish art sales will be fired by Whyte's which is holding such an event in Dublin in 10 days' time.
The company has only entered this area of the business during the past few years but already has a strong presence, thanks in part to the quality of the work being offered. The auction later this month will once again include familiar names, but some of them presented in an unusual guise.
Of no one is this more true than Maurice Canning Wilks, whose landscape pictures come up with great regularity at public auction. Wilks's style is similar to that of a number of other mid-20th century artists such as Craig and McKelvey taking a romantic view of the scenes he portrayed and offering a vision of Ireland unaltered by the social and economic changes taking place.
Whyte's is offering something quite different in subject matter, although similar in spirit: the self-explanatory Connemara Man holding his turf basket is shown in front of a west of Ireland coastline complete with white-washed and thatched cottages.
Painted in the first half of the 1940s when the artist was still relatively young, the canvas might almost have come from the studio of Sean Keating whose heroic portraits of Irish workers were then so much in vogue.
In a short but helpful catalogue entry, Dr S.B. Kennedy suggests the influence also of Augustus John who Wilks much admired at the time. The work offers an alternative view of the artist and suggests that had landscape not come to dominate his oeuvre quite so much, he might have developed in a totally different direction. The work carries a pre-sale estimate of €20,000 to €30,000.
A more representative work of the painter in question is Conkers by the Roman Catholic priest Jack Hanlon.
Expected to make €6,000 to €9,000, the canvas depicts a group of boys playing the game of the title but could not be described as naturalistic in style since the forms of both the figures and of the tree at the centre of the work have been broken down into a sequence of planes painted in brilliant colours.
Indeed, it is the richness of Hanlon's palette which makes the most immediate and lasting impact here, since the picture is dominated by various shades of red and yellow giving the whole an endearingly autumnal glow.
Two other artists have a strong presence in the sale as there are a large number of their pictures among the lots.
The first is a set of six works by Dublin-born Ronald Ossory Dunlop, who spent most of his life in London and was a member of the Royal Academy. Four of this group are land or seascapes, but there is also a self-portrait and a rather fine female nude; price estimates run from €1,200 to €8,000.
There are also six pictures by the late John Ryan who during his lifetime was as well-known for being a writer and raconteur, plus owner of Dublin's famous Bailey pub, as for his paintings.
These are rather charming landscapes originally purchased from Ryan's estate after his death 10 years ago. Estimates are not too high, ranging from €800 to €1,200. As usual, the Whyte's sale takes place in the Minerva Suite of the RDS, Dublin, beginning at 6 p.m. on February 19th.