Adams Important Irish Art 23rd March 2016 : You can Download a PDF Version from the Bottom Menu Down Arrow Icon

Mixed media on board, 91 x 120cm (35¾ x 47¼”)

Signed, inscribed and dated June 1979

Full complete work verso

Field History Callan

is one of many paintings in which Tony O’Malley celebrated the richness of his natural surroundings in Callan.

Callan was his birthplace and the place where he grew up. Although living in Cornwall where he formed part of the St Ives group, with

Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, he returned there every summer with his wife Jane. This signed

and dated work was found on the reverse of another painting, not untypical of O’Malley during this period of his life when he was

often obliged to paint on both sides of whatever ground, cardboard, burlap or hardboard, was available to him. Thus there are even

paintings by him to be found on the reverse of discarded, cut-up boards previously used by other artists, notably Breon O’Casey and,

at least once, on board used by Francis Bacon.

The painting,

Field History Callan

is made up of a series of small panels - another trope of O’Malley’s, often created by gluing pages from

a sketch book onto his board and painting over the final arrangement to give them unity and coherence. Here the painted forms come

straight out of his deep understanding of the ceaseless activity of the fields in summer, the rustle of grasses as small animals and

insects carry out their daily routines, the sounds and movements of different birds, together with tantalising glimpses of the creatures

themselves. However nature was not the only source of inspiration for this and much of O’Malley’s work about Callan and County

Kilkenny. The proliferation of archaeological remains from prehistory as well as more recent history from the medieval Norman pres-

ence in the area inspired his brush and his imagination too and there are forms in this painting that could be the outlines of the floors

of ancient monasteries, vying for position with the paw marks of a badger or some other wild creature.

The overlying, cool, grey palette gives an impression of philosophical detachment when compared to the harsher clarities of his earlier

Irish landscapes and with the explosion of colours that were to dominate his work in the 1980s. It connects this work to a number of

paintings about Kilkenny’s history which also date from this time, and acts like a veil, separating past and present.

Painted in 1979, this work comes one year after George McClelland had agreed to act as O’Malley’s agent and while that arrangement

did not last long, it was to plunge the artist into a round of exhibitions and publicity over the next decade that transformed his reputa-

tion and his career, and enabled him to return to live, permanently outside Callan, which he did until his death in 2003.

Catherine Marshall

February 2016

€ 15,000 - 20,000

Image of picture verso