Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 2nd September 2020

86 73 TERENCE P. FLANAGAN PRUA RHA (1929-2011) Studies towards ‘January God’ A set of three, mixed media on paper, 75 x 55cm (29½ x 21¾’’) Signed; together with a printed copy of Seamus Heaney’s ‘January God’, illustrated by T.P. Flana- gan, published by Arts Council of Northern Ireland. (4) Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective , Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin; Fermanagh County Museum, 1996, catalogue no.35 (reference to). € 2,000 - 3,000 T.P. Flanagan and Seamus Heaney were crucial creative presences in each other’s lives throughout their enduring friendship, and in 1972 this took on a very practical form when the Arts Council of Northern Ireland decided to make a poster to accompany Heaney’s poem January God , and com- missioned Flanagan to make an image for it. The complex, ambiguous form that Flanagan evolved seems to relate to natural forms, with a neo-romantic intensity that recalls Graham Sutherland, but the crown of thorns has also been interpreted as a response towards the violence of the Troubles, which was then at its most intense. T.P. & SHEELAGH FLANAGAN, THEIR LIVES TOGETHER : A STUDIO COLLECTION