34
14
George Russell Æ (1867 - 1935)
The White Sail, Portmarnock
Oil on canvas, 41 x 53cm (16 x 21”)
Signed with monogram
Title inscribed on original exhibition label and framing label for Daniel Egan Gallery verso
Provenance: From the collection of C.P. Curran, who wrote the foreword to the Memorial
exhibition catalogue.
Exhibited: Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by George W. Russell, Daniel Egan’s Gallery,
January-February 1936, Cat. No. 34 (one of seventeen works lent by Mr. & Mrs.
C.P. Curran)
In Æ’S work you will find a serenity of the spirit, grave tenderness, and a gaiety that
expresses itself in dancing light and the free rhythms of children’s play.
Æ painted most of these landscapes where he spent his summers, in the strands and
woods about Dunfanaghy and Marble Hill, in the shadow of Muckish and Errigal. Some
come from Lissadell, some from Coole, some from Toomgraney, and a few from Glen-
garriff.They could hardly have been painted outside the borders of Ireland, but yet, in the
artist’s meditation, locality counts for little; accidents have fallen away, and little trace of
human activity remains.Their harmony and gracious line build up a place of refreshment
and peace in correspondence with the painter’s mood. His figures, irradiated in sunshine,
become ethereal; and there is disengaged from mountain and flowing water, from the
recollection of evening skies, from the fugitive play of children and lovers, a Virgilian
beauty in which the transitory neighbours the eternal.
Edited section of foreword from the Memorial Catalogue, 1936, written by C.P. Curran
€4,000 - 6,000
