Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MARCH 2024

62 53 DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974) Solitude, Lough Neagh Oil on board, 25.4 x 35.56cm (10 x 14’’) Signed Provenance: Collection of Robert Jackson, Belfast. Bequeathed to the present owner, c. 1990. € 10,000 - 15,000 This work is very similar in subject matter and style to another painting by the artist titled Sunday and sold in these rooms in 2022, which also had a pair of female figures at the centre of the composition. These works are looser in their handling of the paint, and in this instance, he is using quick and broad sweeps of colour to indicate the dresses of the two standing figures. He has used an artist sponge to create texture for the leaves of the trees in the background, while other areas have very light touches of paint, with multiple layers of colour visible. Solitude is a vivid and arresting landscape scene which sees O’Neill using a bright tonal palette, some- what uncharacteristic for him as an artist. Two figures stand with their backs to us, unclear if they are stopping to admire the view across the water to the mountains in the distance. We are not sure if they have noticed the reclining figure to the left-hand side of composition. She is depicted in the position of a reclining classical nude, her head resting on one hand and the other holding what appears to be book. As has been noted with many of O’Neill’s works there is a strange- ness or enigma to them. He does not give us much in way of narrative content and the title of work, may reflect the solitary nature of the reading figure, but her relaxed pose feels also at odds in relation to the two other women within this empty landscape. Brian Fallon remarked of Daniel O’Neill, ‘he is an excellent Landscapist. But in the Yeatsian way - there is more imagination than topography’ and concluded that O’Neill’s best works ‘are charged with that mysterious and unquantifiable quality which gives Art its purpose.’ Niamh Corcoran, February 2024