Beschreibung:

PAIR OF STUDIES FOR "BEFORE THE GAME" (or "THE COLISEUM"), 1938 Ernest Columba Hayes RHA (1914-1978)
Signature: signed and dated; one with copy of Irish Times [5 April 1938] on reverse Medium: conté with pencil; (2) Dimensions: 46.99 by 36.83cm., 18.5 by 14.5in. Provenance: Estate of Hildegard Hayes, the artist's wife Dimensions of second title, 14.5 by 14in.Irish Times verso shows a picture of the artist with his submission to the RHA that year. Article reads, "Preparations for the Annual RHA Exhibition... Mr E.C.... . Hayes putting finishing touches to his accepted canvas, Before the Game . Other artists mentioned and shown in the clipping include, Maurice MacGonigal George Collie and Harry Kernoff. It is recorded that Hayes made several trips to the Dublin Zoo to sketch the lions there in preparation for this work.A Dublin born artist, Hayes was a student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in the years 1931 to 1934, where he studied under Seán Keating and had his first painting accepted by the Royal Hibernian Academy while still a student there. He went on to regularly show at the RHA for the rest of his life. He joined the Dublin Sketching Club in 1935 later becoming the clubs secretary. He had his first one-man show at the Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin in 1937. In 1942 he was elected Associte of the RHA and three years later in 1945 became a full member. That same year he married Irma Verona Maguire (née Stranger-Jones) a pianist and divorcée in London. From 1946 to 1956 he was President of the Dublin Sketching Club after this period he relocated to London an in 1958 he completed a large portrait of the Duchess of Gloucester, now in St Botolph’s Hall, which was exhibited in the Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ Exhibition at the Royal Institute Galleries. Irma died in Dublin in 1959 after battling with cancer. Later that year Hayes met Hildegard von Hob in Gelting, Germany whom he married in 1960. From this point until 1977 he travelled extensively throughout Europe working in Italy, France and Germany.A year after his death the RHA commemorated Hayes in a memorial section. Thirteen years later, in 1992 a memorial exhibition was held at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art some examples from this exhibition are included in this collection. Hayes made his home in County Wicklow from the mid-1960s.Anne Crookshank highlighted his love of the land in the exhibition catalogue for Hayes’ 1992 Hugh Lane exhibition, “We can be proud with Ernest Hayes of our lovely East coast as well as of the West which so many of his contemporaries preferred. He is a painter of everyday people and everyday places but he see them and makes us see them as poetry. more