Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MARCH 2024

Important Irish Art | 27 March 2024 www.adams.ie 117 126 EVIE HONE HRHA (1894-1955) The Descent of the Holy Spirit - a sketch for the East Window in Tara Church, Co. Meath Watercolour, 82 x 45cm (32¼ x 17¾”) Signed € 3,000 - 5,000 This unusually large sketch is the final design for the two-light east window by Evie Hone in the historic Church of St. Patrick on the Hill of Tara in Co. Meath. It was her first important commission after officially joining An Túr Gloine in 1935, but from where she had been working since 1933. As a loose, quickly painted sketch it is remarkably close, in terms of design and colouring, to the fi- nal window. It was only Hone’s third window and a departure from her earlier work in glass which reflects more directly An Túr Gloine’s house style of rich decorative effects and narrative detail. At Tara, Hone portrays the story of The Descent of the Holy Spirit as a frieze of monumental apostol- ic figures receiving divine instruction through red tongues of fire carried on rays of golden light that pierce billowing silvery blue clouds set against a patchwork of abstract geometric shapes. The window is regarded as Hone’s first mature work. She believed it was one of her best windows and is known to have visited it not long before she died. She exhibited the sketch widely and it was included in her first major solo show at the Daw- son Gallery in November 1941. The cartoons were included in the posthumous retrospective held in Dublin in 1958. Only one other sketch is known to survive, an earlier, much smaller design housed in Church of Ireland Theological Institute (formerly the Divinity Hostel) in Dublin, which also holds the final cartoons. The window cost £250, was fixed on the 28 May 1936 and unveiled and dedicated on Whitsun Sunday just three days later. Joseph McBrinn, February 2024