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Important Irish Art 2nd December 2015
Kitchen, West Of Ireland
Oil on canvas, 70 x 90cm (27½ x 35½”)
Provenance : Salruck House, Kylemore, Connemara
Exhibited: “Aloysius O’Kelly” The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin May 1999 - Jan 2000 Catalogue No.2
Literature: “Aloysius O’Kelly” Hugh Lane Gallery May 1999 - Jan 2000 Full page illustration p44
“Irish Rural Interiors in Art” by Claudia Kinmonth 2006 illustrated p120
“Aloysius O’Kelly” : “Art, Nation, Empire” Niamh O’Sullivan Fig 2.2 page 20 Catalogue No. 1 illustrated p275
“The most innovative aspect of O’Kelly’s Irish work in the 1800s was his projection of the west of Ireland as the personification of the spiritual, cultural
and social values of the nation.” So wrote Prof. Niamh O’Sullivan in Aloysius O’Kelly Art, Nation, Empire (Field Day Publications, 2010). While his Mass in
a Connemara Cabin exemplifies in a more direct fashion much of those important values, the present work, thought to have been painted in the envi-
rons of Salruck near Kylemore in Connemara displays a much more basic activity, that of butter-making. Claudia Kinmonth in her Irish Rural Interiors
in Art (Yale University Press, 2006) notes that “Up until the 19th century it was the woman’s task to milk the cows and tend to their calves, make butter
with the dash churn and keep the vessels from the dairy clean. Some farms might have a separate room for dairying, usually on the coolest, north
facing side of the house, but in smaller households it was done in the kitchen.” She remarks when discussing the present work – “ Notice the waisted
and flared top of this dash churn, which is small in size, reflecting the small number of cows kept on the farm.
“The same model appears in the centre of Mass in a Connemara Cabin, with the same churn and strainer. The direct entry into the house is another
indicator of that region.”
€ 6,000 - 10,000