Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 4 DECEMBER 2024

34 ALOYSIUS O’KELLY RHA (1853 - 1936) The Christening Party (1908) Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 91.4cm (27 x 36’’) Signed and dated 1908 (lower right) Provenance: The Artist’s family; With Gorry Gallery, Dublin 1981; Collection of the Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., thence by descent. Exhibited: Dublin, Gorry Gallery, February 1981, no. 13; Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, The Irish Impression- ists, 1984, No. 25. Literature: Niamh O’Sullivan, Gorry Gallery, An Exhibition and Sale of 18th - 21st Century Irish Paint- ings, 2024; O’Sullivan, Gorry Gallery, An Exhibition of 18th - 21st Century Irish Paintings & Sculpture, 2011; O’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire, Field Day, 2010; O’Sullivan Re-orientations: Aloysius O’Kelly: Painting, Politics and Popular Culture, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1999; Julian Campbell, The Irish Impressionists, National Gallery of Ireland,1984. € 10,000 - 15,000 In 1874, O’Kelly became one of the first Irish art- ists to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was admitted to the prestigious studio of Jean-Léon Gérome; separately he studied portraiture with Léon Bonnat; in addition, his early experiments in plein-air painting in Brittany were the foundations on which his work evolved. There is a striking stylistic cohesion between O’Kelly’s paintings set in Brittany in two phases, the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, but these converge in two almost identical paintings dated 1908 and 1909 called The Christening Party and L’auberge . By coincidence, both have come up for sale within a few months of each other. O’Kelly tended to date paintings destined for major exhibition ven- ues such as the Royal Academy, the Royal Hiber- nian Academy and the Paris Salon. And indeed he did exhibit a painting in the Salon in 1909 called L’auberge . The Christening Party thus predates the all-but-identical L’auberge . One surmises that he intended this painting for the Salon, but found an early buyer, and so painted a second version for Paris the following year. The painting features a group of adults joyously holding their glasses of cider aloft. This version was given the title The Christening Party when it was exhibited in the Irish Impressionists exhibition in the National Gallery in 1984, although it not clear that it is indeed a christening, as the child must be about two-years of age, and the focus is more widely dispersed: the oval disposition is designed to lead the eye around the painting in an inclusive way. O’Kelly was the first Irish artist to discover Brit- tany in the 1870s and was influential in drawing other Irish artists such as Thomas Hovenden and Augustus Burke there. Moreover, in recognizing the historical, cultural and ethnic connections between Ireland and Brittany, O’Kelly was at pains to counter the negative stereotyping of marginal- ized people. The American critic, E.L. Wakeman noted that ‘[t]hrough the grime and slime of their hard cold lives a few things must stand luminously revealed …. the people of Ireland and those of Hon . F r an c i s D . Mu r naghan J r. Co l l e c t i on