ADAM'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 24th September 2025

68 40 SEAN SCULLY (B.1945) Robe (2002) Watercolour over pencil, 56 x 38cm (22 x 15”) Signed, inscribed & dated 9.3.02 Provenance: With Adler & Co. Gallery, San Francisco, label verso. € 30,000 - 50,000 Irish-born, Sean Scully is one of the best-known contem- porary artists in the world, a remarkable achievement. His move to New York in the mid-1970s initiated the develop- ment of his mature style, entailing a reappraisal of Mini- malism, with a less cerebral aura and an open, expansive, humanising and expressive capacity, allowing access to a much wider range of human experience. Perhaps the most famous manifestation of this is his epic series of Wall of Light paintings, initiated in the late 1980s. There are fewer works in another significant series, the Robe paintings, though it is absolutely central to his concerns. Many of the Robe works date from the early 2000s. In conversation with the writer Kelly Grovier, Scully elaborat- ed on their origins. Perhaps surprisingly, his initial inspira- tion lay in a page from a medieval manuscript, the Book of Durrow in Trinity College. This extraordinary artefact has been dated to the latter part of the seventh century. Scully was taken with a page featuring a remarkable representa- tion of St Matthew the Evangelist. The saint is attired in a lavish robe with a flatly rendered geometric chequerboard pattern, incorporating diagonal panels. It’s so striking it appears anachronistic, as though an abstract composition has been transported back through time. It spurred Scully to reflect on some of the properties - the ceremony and magic - of clothing, the way it can define status and character, and the nature of fabric: its tactility, the way it drapes, the way it carries colour and pattern. He points to Titian’s Portrait of Paul III , a painting that inspired several of his own, which is, he suggests, “80% about the robe.” As he says of Titian’s generously luxuriant pink garment, his own Robe paintings offer “an abstracted reality, set free from the figure…” But rooted, all the time, in human presence and complexity. Born in Dublin, Scully grew up in London. A visit to Moroc- co was important in shaping his artistic vision and eventu- ally contributed to his break-through painting, Backs and Fronts , in 1981. Later that decade, a visit to Mexico led him to devise his Wall of Light paintings. His links with Ireland have always been important to him. He shows regularly at the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin and his work is always on view at the Sean Scully Room at the Hugh Lane Gallery. He is the subject of numerous international exhibitions and his paint- ings and other works feature in art collections throughout the world. Aidan Dunne, August 2025