48 / 196
37.
DANIEL O’NEILL (1920 - 1974)
Frankie
Oil on board, 61 x 46cm (24 x 18”)
Signed
Prov. From the estate of George Connell, The Arches Gallery from whom purchased privately
Daniel O’Neill received no formal training yet assumes a position as one of Ireland’s most popular and eminent artists. As with the present
work, O’Neill incorporated all the subtleties of an experienced artist with unified compositions and good tonal harmonies. Ambiguity is a
common theme within O’Neill’s pictures and Frankie is no exception; as a viewer we are drawn to the dark wonder in the models eyes and
the hint of a smile upon her lips, which ultimately does not yield any answers. Throughout his career, the artist dealt with what it felt like to
be a human being, frequently drawing on his wife, her friends and other models for both artistic inspiration and personal affection.
Mercy Hunter, in her catalogue essay to O’Neills one man show at the Mc Clelland Galleries in 1970, remarked that O’Neill ‘was unfettered
by academic tradition’ and suggested that with him painting was an ‘intuitive 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 experienc-
es, demonstrated a certain modern sensibility. His imagination allowed him to give form to these situations and this process of engagement
with life’s experience, provided him with endless themes.
€20,000 - 30,000