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Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974)
Woman and Child Feeding Hens
Oil on canvas, 38 x 50cm (15 x 19¾”)
Signed
In
Ireland’s Painters,
Crookshank and Glin describe Frank McKelvey as painting with ‘great freshness
and competence.’ (290) Martyn Anglesea has written; ‘An interesting example of a kind of painter that
has received scant attention from art-historians.
Frank McKelvey was Ulster’s primary anti-modernist painter .... possessed of considerable hand skills
and sensitive observation, particularly in landscape and seascape in Antrim and Donegal...’ (160, Royal
Ulster Academy of the Arts Diploma Collection, Belfast, RUA Trust, 2000) Clearly McKelvey has been
influenced by international practitioners such as Jean-Francois Millet and Irish painters such as Walter
Osborne, yet he also painted with a confidence and certitude that was his own. For S.B. Kennedy; ‘he
helped to forge a new and distinct way of representing the Irish scene which is the nearest approximation
we have to a distinct Irish school of painting.’ (9, S.B. Kennedy,
Frank McKelvey - A Painter in His Time
,
Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1993.)
The farmyard was a subject the artist revisited on many occasions for over forty years. It was a scene he
studied, sketched and worked en plein air directly.Throughout the twenties, McKelvey frequently paint-
ed farmyard scenes, within which a woman, often accompanied by a child, would scatter feed to waiting
chickens. Examples include;
‘Feeding Chickens’
1922
, ‘
Feeding the Chickens’ late 1920s,
‘The Back of the
House’
, ‘
Farmyard, Co. Antrim’
c.1950-3 and
‘Bridget’s Hens’ 1968
. In 1924, following his marriage McK-
elvey and his wife settled at the Maze, Co. Down.They had been coming to a cottage there at intervals
since 1921. It was here that the McKelveys kept a large flock of hens and these regularly featured in the
artist’s work. (McKelvey later wrote) ‘”It was through this opportunity that I was able to study poultry
in all effects of sunlight - a subject in which I have always been deeply interested.” Indeed, it is for his
compositions of hens, often picking for food in the dappled sunlight of a farmyard, that McKelvey is
most remembered by many admirers.’ S.B Kennedy.
In ‘
Woman and Child Feeding Hens’,
McKelvey presents a charming and somewhat timeless scene. It is
specific to the artist’s experience and yet universal in its character - it could be any farmyard in Europe.
Typical of McKelvey, he places his figures off centre in the painting to catch the eye. Here the woman
and child are fully engaged in their task of scattering feed. It is impressionistic in style, with the artist’s
characteristic level of detail. He has a measured, yet apt approach to representing a scene, clearly evident
here.The palette is warm, bright, and summery.The sun highlights essential elements of the composition
and pools strategically on the ground.
We thank Marianne O’Kane Boal whose previous writings formed the basis of this note.
€10,000 - 15,000