Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 30TH MARCH 2022

60 37 RICHARD THOMAS MOYNAN RHA (1856-1906) Portrait of a Young Boy in a Sailor Suit Oil on canvas, 52 x 35cm (20½ x 13¾’’) € 3,000 - 5,000 38 THOMAS (TOM) MITCHELL (1834-1903) The Eviction Oil on canvas, 130 x 93cm (51¼ x 36½’’) Signed € 10,000 - 15,000 Not a lot is known of the painter Thomas or Tom Mitchell. A brief mention of him is made in Christopher Wood’s Victorian Painters where he is said to have lived in Bradford, West Yorkshire and exhibited paintings in the late 1880s. The present work, The Eviction is a pow- erful depiction of an elderly man await- ing the arrival of the bailiffs and his impending eviction. Whilst there is no specific reference to Ireland, the scene is undoubtly an Irish one and the date of the work, 1889 is consistent with the period of land agitation associated with the Irish National Land League. The man’s costume and appearance are typically rural Irish, with his hat, side whiskers, jer- kin and heavy boots. There are many sim- ilarities with characters observed in the works of Erskine Nicol and Harry Jones Thaddeus, dating to the same period. The artist has captured a moment of high drama as the seated man awaits his fate but he will not go quietly as his shotgun at the ready attests. The broad, sketchy style of the painting is also interesting and is comparable to the early realist paintings of Van Gogh from the early 1880s, e.g. The Potato Eaters.