Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 26 MARCH 2025

Important Irish Art | 26 March 2025 www.adams.ie 99 85 RORY BRESLIN (B.1963) The Guinness Mask Bronze, 74cm high x 40cm wide (29 x 15¾‘’) Edition 4/5 € 4,000 - 6,000 The Guinness Mask is an interpretation of the keystone head on the historic St. James Gate entrance to the Guinness brewery in Dublin. This enigmatic portrait of a youthful and confident woman, whose intensive gaze evinces a determined character, is framed by waves of the ears of barley, and hops symbolic of the making of ale. Probably a depiction of the agricultural deity Ceres or its Greek equivalent Demeter, this rendition appears to depict the artist’s personification of Georgian beauty. The head diverges from a classical sculptural rendering of the subject to what seems to be the artist’s sensitive use of the features of perhaps a member of the Guinness family or someone close to him. When Arthur Guinness initially leased St. James’s Gate in 1759, he brewed ale. It was another ten years, on the 19th May 1769 before he ex- ported his stout to England for the first time. The St. James’s arch was built adjacent to the site of the original St. James’s Gate, the city’s western customs house which lay just outside the medieval city of Dublin and was de- molished in 1734. This gate’s keystone was said to have represented either St. James; Ceres (the Goddess of Corn) or Bacchus (the Greek God of Wine and Merriment). The site was traditionally the start of a pilgrimage to Compostela and pilgrims from all over Ireland used to gather on this site to start the journey to Spain.