Beschreibung:

PEONY, 1991 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
Signature: signed, titled, dated and with artist's archival number [588] on reverse Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 10 x 12in. (25.40 x 30.48cm) Provenance: Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, where purchased by the present owner, circa1997 Exhibited: Literature: Presented in the original frame chosen by the artist's wife, Anne Madden A letter from the artist to the present owner accompanies this lot. "…I feel very humble on receiving your wonderful letter…,... , for it is rare for an artist to be given to feel that his occasional glimpses of spiritual insight have somehow managed to move another person. Thank you. In fact your painting was inspired by a small work by Édouard Manet [French Realist and Impressionist painter, 1832-1883] which I believe I first saw at The Orangerie in the Paris of 1938! Yes, the frame was something of a challenge in itself and in painting your Peony I certainly had it in mind. A second related painting I gave my wife, Anne Madden in memory of her peony which had last bloomed during the previous summer…" Louis le Brocquy Les Combes, Carros, France 23 January 2000 Most le Brocquy paintings are palimpsests, one layer folds over another and provide different vantage points from which to view. As the title suggests this is a peony. Such flowers thrive around the Mediterranean in springtime or early summer, ranging in colour from deep purple to pure white. Mythologically, they are named for Paeon, student of Asclepius, Greek God of healing. The master became jealous of his protégé, who, for his own safety, was turned by Zeus into a flower. In Asia the Peony is valued more for the healing properties of its seeds than the beauty of its appearance. Everything depends upon the eye of the beholder. le Brocquy's wife, Anne, an illustrious painter in her own right, had grown this peony in her garden. It was the last of them. He painted it in homage to her. And so, at another level again, this peony is transfused with love. A delicate eroticism pervades its fragrance comparable to his later 1998 series of watercolours titled 'Being,' where the human body is an organism in flower. At the painterly level, Peony was sparked by a viewing, half a century previously, of Édouard Manet, who supposedly invented 'Modernity,' at the Orangerie in Paris in 1938. Manet grew peonies in his garden at Gennevilliers. It was his favourite flower. Those deep lobes and varied hues corresponded to his subtle harmonics. But Manet was his own man where convention and tradition were concerned. Modernity for him was as much a question of choosing as resisting influences from the past: he painted as things were and without much concern for established practice of brushstroke or perspective. In his wake, this is a le Brocquy as much as it is a Peony. Finally, the painting reveals a world through the petals of a flower. As Empress Michiko of Japan would say to the artist in January of the year after the painting was completed: 'I think you are trying to reach something behind and beyond, which goes to the essence.' This Peony brings in its train a swarming teeming underground metropolis. Dom Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB October 2017 Former Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick, Hederman was among those Louis le Brocquy choose to speak at his funeral service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 2012. more