Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 30TH MARCH 2022

34 23 TONY O’MALLEY HRHA (1913 - 2003) Valley Wind, Jemisa (1995) Oil on board, 121 x 90cm (47½ x 35½’’) Signed with incised initials; signed, inscribed and dated July 1995 and no. 3222 verso € 30,000 - 40,000 From 1988 Tony and Jane O’Malley spent time on Lanzarote. As with their prior sojourns in the Bahamas, where Jane’s sister lived until about 1986, they went because the warm, dry climate was kinder, if not essen- tial, for Tony’s health (he had come through TB when he was young, and was prone to angina). They moved from St Ives to Physicianstown, near his birthplace, Callan in Co Kilkenny, around 1990, and their practice of travelling annually continued. O’Malley was not at all averse to bright colour and tonality prior to visiting the Bahamas, but the experience allowed a warm, bright, high-keyed palette to dominate his compositions in a way that was new, and vibrantly attractive. He was acutely responsive to his surroundings, but generally O’Malley did not paint representations of things in the conventional sense. He borrowed the term “inscape” from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe his approach. That approach entailed a response to everything around him: the temperature, the forms, colours, patterns and sounds. The music of birdsong and a glimpse of plumage were just as likely to inspire him as any geographical feature. His eyes and ears were drawn to details. This buoyantly lyrical painting was inspired by the Valley of Jemisa on Lanzarote, a rural location close to the coast with topography that recalls the rugged uplands of the north of Gran Canaria, though more fertile and richly vegetated. The terraced hillsides were once intensively farmed with crops of barilla. Now euphorbias and wildflowers proliferate and the valley is rich in butterflies and birdlife - including kestrels, Barbary partridge, hoopoes and many more. O’Malley delights in the vibrant warmth of the atmosphere and, one senses, is grateful for the wind mentioned in the title, a breath of air that seems to infuse the entire picture surface with movement. Aidan Dunne, February 2022