Irish art inspired by the beauty of Europe

Throughout the 20th century, many Irish artists travelled widely on the European mainland, with some settling in Mediterranean countries for long periods of their lives. While seeking out sunnier climes might have been part of the reason, escaping a more conservative culture in Ireland was another. Some Irish artists were also actively engaged in artists colonies throughout Europe, particularly in Brittany and other parts of France.

Paintings for sale in three top Dublin auction rooms next week include plenty of examples of this artistic penchant to live and work abroad.

Take for example, Mary Swanzy’s painting, Pont du Gard (€25,000-€35,000), which is for sale at Adam’s Important Irish Art live auction on Wednesday, March 26th at 6pm

In the catalogue essay, Aidan Dunne writes that Swanzy (1882-1978) found inspiration for most of her best work during time spent abroad. This included a visit to eastern Europe, the south seas and also to Paris and the south of France. “A notably strait-laced individual, her temperament seems at odds with the bohemian circles in which she worked in Paris,” writes Dunne. Swanzy was drawn to Provence, the part of France most associated with Van Gogh and Cézanne, but she also travelled to St Tropez, Grasse and Nîmes, which is the location for this painting of the Roman aqueduct on the Gardon river.

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[ Mary Swanzy: From strait-laced girl to first Irish cubistOpens in new window ]

Patrick Swift (1927-1983) also spent much of his life abroad, first in London and then in Portugal, also visiting France and Italy, as his painting of the Italian town of Positano (€8,000-€12,000) shows. Dunne describes Swift as an extremely adventurous representational painter, who was opposed to abstraction. “His settling in Portugal was partly a way of focusing more intently on his own work, away from the pressures of prevailing orthodoxies,” writes Dunne.

By the end of the second World War, Paris became a magnet for an impressive number of Irish women painters such as Mainie Jellett and Grace Henry.

“In the following decades, this new generation of artists made great strides breaking the stranglehold of the Royal Irish Academy by creating alternative venues where modernist art would be shown to the Irish public,” writes Dr Frances Ruane in the notes for deVeres’s Irish art auction, which takes place on Tuesday, March 25th.

Norah McGuiness was one of the pioneering Irish female artists who was drawn to European modernism at a time when a more conservative approach shaped Irish art. Following her initial studies at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, she moved to the Chelsea School of Art in London, and then on to Paris. While in Paris, she studied with cubist artists and teacher, André Lhote.

[ Art in Focus: ‘River to the Sea’ by Norah McGuinnessOpens in new window ]

Her painting Feeding Ground (€14,000-€18,000) features in deVeres’s auction, as does Barbara Warren’s Tarragona Remembered (€2,000-€3,000). Warren also studied under Lhote in Paris, and later travelled to Spain on a scholarship.

The horrors of the second World War have also inspired many artists, including the Northern Ireland artist Colin Middleton. His haunting oil painting of two figures, entitled The Promised Land (€20,000-€30,000), was inspired by the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the war. On sale at Adams, the painting also shows Middleton’s interest in Van Gogh’s work.

Hughie O’Donoghue’s painting Cherbourg (€7,000-€10,000) is one of a series of paintings inspired by his father’s wartime experiences. The atmospheric work – for sale at deVeres – clearly captures the dread and uncertainly about escaping from France at the end of the second World War.

Italian cities are a perennial inspiration for artists. Fontana di Trevi, Roma by Cecil Maguire (€2,000-€3,000) and Barges, Burano, Venice by James English (€700-€1,000), are for sale in Adam’s auction.

Also on the travel theme, Grace Henry’s Bridge in Venice (€1,200-€1,800) and Letitia Marion Hamilton’s Santa Maria de Formosa (€1,200-€1,800) are for sale at deVeres.

Morning Light, Tuscany, Italy (€1,000-€1,500) by Colin Gibson is in Whyte’s Spring online art sale, which ends on Monday, March 24th.

Meanwhile, an online auction at Dolan’s in Co Galway, which ends on Monday, March 24th, includes a painting, Breath of the Sea Off Biarritz (€1,400-€2,200) by Susan Cronin, and a painting entitled Night Market (€4,500-€7,500) by Arthur K Maderson, who divides his time between Ireland and a mountainous village in the Cévennes region of France.

Finally, book lovers should take note that Purcell Auctioneers in Birr, Co Offaly, will sell the first part of the library of the late Bruce Arnold (1936-2024) on Wednesday, March 26th, from 10am. Arnold, who was a prominent Dublin-based journalist and author with an expertise in literary and art criticism, was an enthusiast of the Irish novelist, poet and art critic George Moore. Many of Moore’s books are for sale in the auction, as is a special edition of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (€400-€600). The Victorian home of the late journalist in Glenageary, south Dublin, is also currently for sale.

Adams.ie; deveres.ie; dolansart.com; purcellauctioneers.ie