Adam's Important Irish Art September 26th 2018

96 82 WALTER FREDERICK OSBORNE RHA ROI (1859-1903) Moonrise Oil on canvas, 50 x 68cm (19¾ x 26¾’’) Signed and dated (18)’93 Provenance: Adam’s, 14th December 1994, Lot No.28. Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition 1894, No.113. Literature: Jeanne Sheehy, ‘Walter Osborne’, Ballycotton 1974, Catalogue No.402, p.137; Irish Independent , 12th March 1894 - Described as a “ Well treated picture of the Impressionist type.” Moonrise is an interesting painting in Walter Osborne’s oeuvre, in that it is a ‘pure’ landscape, including sheep grazing, but lacking in human figures, and in the presence of a vivid moon rising in a clear blue sky – a contrast to the subdued palette of the earth. There is a reflective feeling for nature, reminiscent of the Barbizon school, particularly Charles Daubigny’s crepuscular scenes of shepherds with sheep and moons rising above the land (1) and Nathaniel Hone’s pastoral landscapes. The 1890s was an intensely busy but fulfilling period in Osborne’s career, when he was undertaking official portraits of dignitaries and society ladies; painting more informal portraits of his family, such as At the Breakfast Table , 1894, and friends; representing genre scenes in the Dublin streets; painting landscapes around Dublin; making visits to Co. Galway; as well as helping to look after his family. He thus found solace in nature, painting in the open air in north Co. Dublin, where his friend, Hone, was depicting cattle or sheep in pastures near Malahide and Raheny and Joseph M. Kavanagh was painting sheep grazing in Fingal and in Foxrock, a few miles south of Dublin, where fellow landscapist J.B.S. McIllwain lived. Moonrise may be set near Foxrock, with its mixture of farmland and scrubby landscape. It is contemporary with some of Osborne’s major Irish landscapes of the period, for example The Thornbush, 1893 and Milking Time , c.1893. Being the son of animal painter William Osborne, Walter had a real empathy for animals, both pets and farm animals, and he seemed to capture something of their true spirit. During the 1880s, he had painted a number of pictures of shepherds with their flocks of black-faced sheep in England, including The Sheepfold , 1885 and Counting the Flock , 1885 (sold in Adam’s, Important Irish Art, May 2018, Lot 32) (2) . In England, the sheep were guarded by a shepherd, but in Moonrise they are untended, grazing freely in the rougher Irish landscape. With its pastures, hedges, trees, horizon line and large sky, its earthy tones of olive greens and browns and its free ‘buttery’ brush- strokes, Moonrise is reminiscent of Hone’s scenes of pastures with cattle. With their dun-coloured fleeces, Osborne’s sheep are carefully observed, but well integrated into the landscape. A notable feature of his sheep, and indeed animal paintings in general, is the way that one or two of the animals in the foreground might look out at the viewer with curiosity, thus engaging our interest – as if caught in a photograph, or based on a preparatory drawing by the artist. Some of Osborne’s paintings show his interest in moonlight and starlight, for example in scenes observed in Rush, Galway and Round- stone. During the early 1890s, he observed the atmospheric scene of Rising Moon, Galway Harbour (Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane). Here, in Moonrise , he was moved by the sight of the moon rising in daylight, in a clear blue sky, and by the lit-up cloud beyond the horizon. The painting is contemporary with the early Celtic Twilight poems of W.B. Yeats and, although Osborne’s emphasis was naturalistic rather than symbolic, his image of a bright, three-quarter, lozenge-shaped moon rising above the tranquil landscape and grazing sheep, is a romantic one, symbolising the seasonal regeneration of nature. Moonrise was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 1894 and then at the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, London in the same year. Julian Campbell, August 2018 1. Eg. Daubigny’s ‘ Return of the Flock ’, 1877 (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). 2. The Sheepfold’ , c.1885, illustrated in J. Sheehy, ‘Walter Osborne’, 1983, p.74, Catalogue No.22; ‘ Counting the Flock ’, 1885, ‘Important Irish Art’, Adam’s, May 2018, Lot 32. See also ‘The Return of the Flock’ , 1885 and ‘A Shepherd and His Flock’, 1887 (‘Important Irish Art’, Adam’s, 3rd December 2002, Lot 78). € 60,000 - 80,000