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57 JOSEPH O’REILLY (1865-1893)Retribution
Oil on canvas, 61 x 46cm (24 x 18’’)
Signed
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1892, Catalogue No.318.
Joseph OReilly was born in Dublin in 1865. He studied at the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools from 1884-1888, and won a large number of
prizes, and was already exhibiting pictures at the RHA and Royal Dublin Society.
Dr Julian Campbell writes “O’Reilly was a highly-accomplished, hard-working and brilliant artist, who combined elements of the Genre painting
of an earlier period with a modern Naturalism. O’Reilly became a friend of Walter Osborne, who greatly admired his work. Osborne and many
of his circle had studied in Antwerp; however, it was to Paris that he encouraged O’Reilly to go to continue his art education. There he was a
pupil, not in the popular Academie Julian, but in the Academie of Delecluse, at 84, Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Montparnasse, c.1888-89.
“Back home in Ireland, he specialized in genre scenes and landscapes. His genre subjects include
An Interesting Game
, c.1892, a scene of
children playing cards and
Girl Musician and Chimney Sweep
. One of O’Reilly’s finest interiors is
Contributions Earnestly Solicited,
1890 offered
in Adams in 2013 featuring a seated barefoot boy surrounded by pets. It illustrates the artists skilled treatment of glassy sunlight falling in a
room, precise representation of still-life objects, and distinctive realism.”
Most recently O’Reilly’s superb
A Tinsmith
at Work
sold in these rooms in December 2015 (lot 72, 2/12/15) and shows a genre scene of a family
in an interior: featuring an elderly tinsmith at work with pots and pans, and a girl, perhaps his daughter or granddaughter, and an infant look-
ing on. According to Dr Campbell the painting seems to combine the genre tradition of earlier artists, such as Edward Sheil (c.1834-69) and
George W. Brownlow (c.1835-76), in its careful, affectionate observation of family life, yet also the more modern Naturalism of the 1880s. The
present work, the subject of which is somewhat less genial, is nonetheless brilliantly observed. O’Reilly’s signature subdued tonality is present
with the grey, browns and silvery colours offset against the bright red of the woman’s shawl. Scattered on the floor are some dropped objects
perhaps pointing to the reason for the boy’s reprimand and O’Reilly’s familiar earthenware jars upon a shelf appears above the cowering boy
as it does in
The Tinsmith
at Work
.
€ 6,000 - 10,000