121 / 272
119
Important Irish Art | 7th December 2016
83 DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974)Ruined Chapel
Oil on board, 40.5 x 50.5cm (16 x 20’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sale, Christies Belfast October 1989, Cat. No. 370, where purchased by current owner.
The potency of Daniel O’Neill’s early paintings lies in the heightened Gothic romanticism of mood that typifies his best work.
Ruined Chapel
is full of nostalgia and mystery, a sense of an almost-vanished beauty and a search for spiritual meaning.
O’Neill’s nocturnal scenes are as much about light as darkness. The luminous electric blue of the sky is lit by a moon that picks
out a broken section of wall, then the right hand section of the altar and that filters across the chapel floor. O’Neill’s opaque
and creamy paint surface in certain passages is full of reds, blues and greens half-hidden within the layers of glazes over white,
and is controlled and muted as it passes from light into shadow. His impasto traces the architectural detailing of the chapel,
maintaining a balance of physical strength and fragility.
While one would not expect to find points of comparison between O’Neill and John Piper it is inescapable in looking at
Ruined
Chapel
and perhaps is indicative of a particular post-war mood that is both poignant and celebratory in its vision of their native
landscape and its architectural legacy.
Dickon Hall, November 2016
€ 2,000 - 4,000