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Mainie Jellett (1897 - 1944)
Study for Achill Horses II
Pencil and gouache, 22.2 x 36.9cm (8.75 x 14.5”)
Signed and dated 1939, also signed and inscribed title verso, Artist’s label verso
This study is part of a series of work depicting horses roaming freely in the countryside, which
Jellett made in the later stages of her prematurely short career. She began to move away from
the pure abstract works of the 1920s to approach more representational subjects, albeit still
preoccupied by colour balance, internal rhythm and relation of shapes and forms to each other
within the composition. There began to be a more organic form to her paintings of this time,
and she used colours and forms with their groundings in nature, although not totally natural-
istic - “I do not deny nature. I would not; but I wish to copy nature not in her external aspects
but in her internal organisation” (Artists’ Vision, p51). Much of her subject matter from this
period of time is inspired by the western landscape, and her time spent in Achill. She chose the
traditional setting of the noble and romantic West of the country, which was a favoured topic
for her male contemporaries, and developed it in her individual Cubist style.
The composition of this painting shows five horses in different positions, each individually
positioned in the landscape but connected with it and each other through the unifying curves
linking the abstract shapes of the background. The tonal ranges of the painting are in mainly
earthy colours, grounding the abstraction of form and composition in nature, while the shading
on the horses’ bodies is sharply delineated.
While the subject of this series was in some ways a departure for the artist, some commentators
such as Charles Sidney inThe Bell remarked on the continuing influence of her former teacher
Albert Gleizes, whose woodcut illustrations of the early 1920s also featured similar horses’
heads.
Her success in creating a new visual language for rural Ireland was confirmed by the fact that
Jellett was chosen to create murals representing the life and people of Ireland for the Free
State’s pavilion at the Glasgow Empire Exhibition in 1938. One of the ten scenes depicted
was horses grazing in the West of Ireland. A painting of the subject, Achill Horses II, (1938,
National Gallery of Ireland) was shown at the Glasgow exhibition and was also included in the
Irish pavilion at the New York World Fair the following year.This study from 1939 shows her
continued fascination with, and development of, the subject.
€3,000 - 5,000