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Artist: Sean Scully (b.1945) Title: Barcelona (1998) Signature: signed 'Sean Scully', titled and dated '98 Medium: watercolour on paper Size: 57.70 x 76.30cm (22.7 x 30in) Framed Size: 65.3 x 84cm (25.7 x 33.1in) Provenance: Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (label verso); Sotheby's, London, 'Modern & Post-War British Art', 22nd November 2017 lot 179; Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} Sean Scully gravitated towards Barcelona from the early 1990s. One can see how the painter was drawn to the light, the stone, the colour, intense and burnished, and to the Catalan temperament. He set up a studio and spent long periods there. By 1998, he had built up the elements of the pictorial voc... Read more Sean Scully Lot 16 - 'Barcelona (1998)' Estimate: €50,000 - €70,000 Sean Scully gravitated towards Barcelona from the early 1990s. One can see how the painter was drawn to the light, the stone, the colour, intense and burnished, and to the Catalan temperament. He set up a studio and spent long periods there. By 1998, he had built up the elements of the pictorial vocabulary that served him well for several decades. The beginnings of this vocabulary lay in an enormous work, Backs and Fronts, made in 1981, that marked his arrival as an artist to be reckoned with in the daunting world of New York. In the early 1980s he visited Mexico. He was struck by the strength of the sunlight, as he had been in North Africa years before, and especially by its enlivening effect on the colour and texture of the ancient stonework. The density and rich lustre of the surfaces, and the intensity of both light and shade, made an indelible impression on him. Initially, he made a series of watercolours. Really, he wasn't trying to depict a scene in a conventional sense. Rather, he felt that when he looked at a stone wall, all the material for a painting was there, and the question was how to convey a sense of what he was seeing and feeling in paint. In time, what became one of his most significant, wide-ranging and diverse series of paintings, the Walls of Light, grew out of his attempts to answer that question. He elaborated on the more flexible, organic, emotional way of applying paint he'd introduced in Backs and Fronts. Gradually he realised that he had a whole new language of expression. This watercolour is essentially a wall of light, one might say a flag of light given that the palette references the Catalan flag, as well as the dramatic tenebrism characteristic of Spanish light and shade, and Spanish painting. Born in Dublin and raised in London, Scully is one of the pre-eminent contemporary artists internationally. He has always remained attached to and identified with Ireland and his work is always on view in the Sean Scully Room at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Aidan Dunne, September 2023