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DANIEL O’NEIL (1920-1974)
Portrait of the Writer Laurence James Ludovici
Oil on board, 57 x 48.25cm (22½ x 19’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sold in these rooms ‘Important Irish Art’ sale, 11th December 1996, Catalogue No.63
Following the success of a joint exhibition with Gerard Dillon at the Contemporary Picture Gallery in 1943 and a solo exhibition
in 1946 at Victor Waddington’s gallery, O’Neill received critical acclaim in Dublin and his native city, Belfast. His popularity led
to private commissions and a contract from Victor Waddington, which continued till the late 1960’s. With Waddington’s help,
O’Neill also met new patrons and his work was seen in America, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Holland.
The sitter, Laurence James Ludovici was a non-fiction American writer whose focus in the late 1940’s was the subject of
Anesthesia and Penicillin. There were significant advances in monitoring Anesthesia following scientific discoveries in the 19th
century which led to modern anesthetic techniques, moreover as a direct result of the war Penicillin was mass-produced and
by 1944, the benefits of the medicine were advertised on public buildings throughout Europe. This portrait may have resulted
from the writer’s published findings on Anesthesia or his published manuscript ‘Fleming, Discover of Penicillin’ in 1952.
Admiring the Italian Renaissance painters, O’Neill’s depictions of the sitter gazing directly at the viewer with a narrative element
in a formal setting are characteristics of Florentine portraiture during the 1500’s. The lemon, bird and notebook may symbol-
ize longevity, experimentation and mortality. The date and initials under the quill pen suggest the writer’s published medical
findings.
When this painting was first sold in these salerooms in 1996 (11 December, Lot 63) it was illustrated in black and white. Cata-
logue details state that it was ‘painted at Bryansford, Co. Down’. After his marriage to Eileen Lyle in 1943, the O’Neills moved to
a small mining town of Conlig in Co. Down where O’Neill became known in the locality.
It is doubtful if O’Neill knew the sitter personally so it is likely this portrait was a private commission from an American collector
who had viewed his paintings from the mid 1940’s. O’Neill had shown several works in a group exhibition in association with
the American Artists Galleries, in New York in 1947 and once more in 1948 in a group show held in Los Angeles. In addition
to these exhibitions in 1950, Victor Waddington organized a traveling group exhibition in America, which included O’Neill and
his friends Gerard Dillon and George Campbell in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and ‘New Irish
Painters.’
Dr Theodore Goodman who assisted in the selection of the artists to show in the New York exhibition in 1947 reviewed
O’Neill’s first one-man exhibition in October 1946 at the Waddington Galleries, ‘There is another side to O’Neill’s art which is
worthy of mention, his gift of portraiture. I have only seen one of his portraits, the one of Lady Nelson, but he has succeeded
in the most difficult thing in portraiture, expressing personality and at the same time composing a painting.’
Karen Reihill
€ 6,000 - 8,000