Beschreibung:

Maurice MacGonigal PPRHA HRA HRSA (1900-1979)
Signature: signed lower left; titled on reverse
Medium: oil on board
Size: 18 x 26in. (45.72 x 66.04cm) Framed Size: 24 x 32in. (60.96 x 81.28cm) Condition: Very good stable condition. Paint surface is clean, and board is in equally very good condition. Backing board affixed verso with window cut-out revealing inscription. Presented in a water gilt frame; unglazed. Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Where purchased by Mrs. Wallace Sterling, circa 1969; The Estate of Judith Sterling Morse Plunkett, Pasadena; Her sale, Abell Auctions, Los Angeles, 14 June 2020, lot 338; Private collection The present work, depicts the cattlemen of Connemara, above the Clifden Fair and was inspired by the poem High and Low by James Henry Cousins (1873-1956) the Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, actor, critic, editor and teacher. He used several pseudonyms ...Read more The present work, depicts the cattlemen of Connemara, above the Clifden Fair and was inspired by the poem High and Low by James Henry Cousins (1873-1956) the Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, actor, critic, editor and teacher. He used several pseudonyms including Mac Oisín and the Hindu name Jayaram. In 1897 Cousins moved to Dublin where he became part of a literary circle which included W.B. Yeats, George Russell and James Joyce among others. High and Low by James H. Cousins He stumbled home from Clifden fair With drunken song, and cheeks aglow. Yet there was something in his air That told of kingship long ago. I sighed - and inly cried With grief that one so high should fall so low. He snatched a flower and sniffed its scent, And waved it toward the sunset sky. Some old sweet rapture thro' him went And kindled in his bloodshot eye. I turned - and inly burned With joy that one so low should rise so high. MacGonigal loved painting fairs and cattle. The cattle fairs of Connemara always fascinated him, as much for the cattle dealers as for the animals themselves, and Clifden and Maam Cross drew large crowds of sellers and buyers. The men and women from the surrounding mountain areas driving their cattle to sale, the small farmer with two or three to sell and often the MacGonigal family neighbour, Maggie from Faul, with her much prized three or four cows would all be there. The Woods family from Roundstone (buyers), Joyces (sellers and buyers), the Westmeath and Longford buyers, Farrells, Molihans would all be there with the Purcell brothers... this latter group with big lorries and flashing bundles of notes bestrode the fairs like Lords of the Atlas. But they knew not only the cattle over the years but the sellers and would always watch out for the seller with few but high-quality beasts from limestone fields. (Stock of this provenance built up strong bones and good lean meat and fatty cattle were going 'out of fashion' by this time). The artist, then in his seventies, had reverted to his colour palette of many years previously, brilliant reds, scarlets, vivid greens all deriving from his interest in prismatic colour and his early training in the stained-glass studios of his uncle Joshua and cousin Harry Clarke In the present work the colour is so vivid that the two cattlemen appear to be moving forward. The artist anchors the composition with the signpost and echoes and re-echoes the colour composition by notes of red on a diminishing scale. The composition is further anchored by the foreground cattle and the young bull calf in the centre of the composition, positioned just 'off' centre to stop the eye rushing out of the frame. The artist's interest in dynamic asymmetry is captured to great effect in this painting. But the balance of it all is the telling of the tale, the pictorial logic of its making if you like, and all reflecting the artist's intense interest in the scale and importance of figurative processes. The origins of painting into white (the prismatic scale) used traditionally in the medium of stained-glass to gain its point, beautifully captured in the present work. Ciarán MacGonigal Summer 2020 Visualise on Your Wall Using Art Visualiser 1. Sc