Adam's Important Irish Art Auction Tuesday 27th March 2018

60 57 RICHARD DOYLE (1824 - 1883) Pied Piper of Hamelin Watercolour, 51 x 77cm (20 x 30¼”) Signed Exhibited: The Works of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., and a collection of drawings by the late Richard Doyle, The Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1885, no. 287 in the catalogue, lent by A. H Christie, esq of East Runton, Norfolk. From an early age Richard Doyle or ‘Dickie Doyle’ as he was affectionately known, showed a natural ability for creating original and humorous designs. A consummate draughtsman, during his teenage years he kept a manuscript journal, now housed in the Print department of the British Museum, which consists of 156 pages of pen and ink sketches. He developed a successful career as an book illustrator with William Thackeray declaring on the advent of a new trans- lation of Brother Grimm’s fairytales ‘The Fairy Ring’ in 1846, that he was the new ‘master of the fairyland’ supplanting the artist George Cruikshank. (The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle by Russell Miller, 2010). Doyle also worked for many years as an illustrator for the satirical magazine Punch (1841 - 2002), designing their first cover and masthead and producing more than one thousand drawings during his seven years of employment. A staunch Catholic all his life, his relationship with Punch came to a drastic end in 1850 when he resigned due to their hostility towards the current Pope. From this point onwards there is a significant shift in the trajectory of his artistic career. Although he continued to provide fantastical illustrations for books, such as his celebrated ‘In Fairyland’ (1869), by the mid-1870s, he had begun to experiment with larger scale works in watercolour, such as the present example. It is important to note he never had any formal training in the medium; these works were therefore technically exper- imental. This unconventional approach, lends itself to these mythological subjects in which he imbued them with a surreal or dreamlike quality. He exhibited in 1868 and 1871 with the RA and two years following his death in 1883, the Grosvenor Gallery in Lon- don exhibited a collection of his drawings in which The Pied Piper of Hamelin was included. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a particularly interesting subject to depict, as there are numerous contradictory endings to the story. The legend dates back to the Middle Ages, and tells the tale of people of Hamelin, Lower Saxony, whose city is suffering from a plague of rats. The Pied Piper is hired by the mayor to lure the rats away with his magical instrument, in return for payment. However, when he has accomplished his task, the mayor reneges on their agree- ment. It is at this point that the sequence of events becomes confused. In certain versions, the piper takes revenge on the town by returning and in the same manner and luring all of the children, bar three, from the town to the Weser River, to their death. In others, again he transfixes them with his music but leads them instead to the beautiful lands surrounding the Koppenberg Mountain. In this more pleasant account, once his debt has been paid he returns all of the children unharmed. It is difficult to ascertain from Doyle’s work which version of events he has decided to depict. What fate lies just be- yond the frame for the innocent children of Hamelin? The two figures closest to the Piper seem to belie a more sinis- ter turn of events, as they hold onto one another turning away from the music in fear. Their newfound understanding is visually contrasted with the hoards of smiling children behind them, blindly following the Piper. They have not yet crossed the town’s threshold, here a physical as well as metaphorical space, that seems to illustrate the moment in our lives in which our childhood innocence is lost to the cruel adult world. This is further heightened by the anguish and torment of the parents in the distance calling in desperation after their lost children. NIAMH CORCORAN € 10,000 - 15,000