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122 Daniel O’Neill (1920-1974)
Clown Woman
Oil on board, 61 x 44cm (24 x 17.25”)
Signed; personal inscription verso
Exhibited: “Daniel O’Neill” Exhibition The Dawson Gallery, 1971 Cat. No. 17
The 1970 exhibition held at the McClelland Gallery, Belfast was Daniel O’Neill’s first one - man show in his native city for eighteen years. Mercy
Hunter in her catalogue essay remarked that O’Neill ‘was unfettered by academic tradition’
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and suggested that with him painting was an ‘intui-
tive and living thing’. She concluded that O’Neill’s achievement in technical mastery and his immense range of expression was drawn from ‘a real
psychological insight into life’.
Inspired by his own personal complexity, O’Neill explored a range of human emotions - birth - love- anxiety and death and, in dealing with these
psychological experiences, demonstrated a certain modern sensibility. His imagination allowed him to give form to these situations and this pro-
cess of engagement with life’s experience, provided him with endless themes.
Throughout his career, O’Neill had a fascination with objects and images which could be employed as metaphors for the condition of being human
and the tragic/comic aspect of the clown appealed to him in this regard. Daniel O’Neill’s first show in Dublin, in a joint exhibition with Gerard
Dillon, took place at the Contemporary Picture Gallery in 1943, and the catalogue for that show lists two of his titles as clowns
Although
Clown Woman
is inscribed verso to Christopher and dated 1973, it is likely that it was made some time earlier, in the mid to late sixties,
as it was shown in his 1971 exhibition at the Dawson Gallery during the year after the Belfast show. O’Neill had painted a series of clown images
between 1966 and 1969 and is known to have made a gift of another clown work which was inscribed ‘to Kathleen from Dan 1972’. For the most
part, these paintings are in individual portrait form, although
Reclining Clown
c.1968, is unusual in that the clown/girl is placed in a landscape
setting.
Clown Woman
is portrayed in typical O’Neill garb and the pose calls to mind earlier works such as Kathleen (1954) and Anna (c.1950) as well as
a painting inspired by Maureen O’Neill which was made after one of their painting visits to Kerry in the 1960s.Wearing the same costume as the
Clown Woman
, O’Neill gave her a mask- like round face, large eyes and strongly marked eyebrows, with schematic treatment of the light and shade
similar to the manner in which he was to paint his clown heads.
There is a serene feeling about
Clown Woman.
Confident draughtsmanship describes the figure in bold simplified forms, and the paint is sympa-
thetic both in colour, tone and treatment, while there is great subtlety in the harmonies achieved in the treatment of the dress and shawl, while the
broad brushwork imparts an authority in execution.The clown face is enigmatic in expression as befits the nature of the subject.
The verve and energy O’Neill brought to his work of the 1960s was inspired in part by visits to Kerry, where he once more engaged with the Irish
landscape.This fresh approach continued on his return to London as is evidenced in the many fine works produced during that time.
Anne-Marie Keaveney BA Fine Art (Painting) MLitt Visual Culture.
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Hunter, M., Catalogue Essay, ‘New Paintings by Daniel O’Neill’, McClelland Gallery, 1970
€15,000 - 20,000