Beschreibung:

CHILD WITH DOLL, HOMMAGE A JANKEL ADLER 1949 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (b.1916)
Signature: signed and dated 'Jan. 49' lower right; inscribed and signed again on reverse Medium: drawing in carbon with watercolour and bodycolour Dimensions: 62 by 46cm., 24.5 by 18.2 5in. Provenance: Acquired by the present owner in 1951 Exhibited: RHA, Dublin, 1949, catalogue no. 231; 'New Irish Painters', touring exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Baltimore Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Delaware Art Centre, Wilmington, J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, and the Toledo M Child with Doll was made in London in January 1949, at a crucial point in the development of Louis le Brocquy’s art. Created between his celebrated Traveller paintings and the Grey Period works, of wh... hich A Family, 1951 (National Gallery of Ireland), is the best-known example, Child with Doll includes elements of both series. In form, the ragged toddler who trots along while embracing a smiling doll is reminiscent of the Traveller children who hang on their mother’s skirts in paintings such as Tinkers Enter the City, 1947, and Tinkers Break Whitethorn, 1947. Yet in setting and theme Child with Doll presages many of the Grey Period works. Like A Family, Child in a Yard, 1953 (Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane), and several of the other paintings that le Brocquy exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1956, this image features a child whose humanity is contrasted with its stark surroundings. Dating from the post-war period when atomic catastrophe seemed a very real threat, these works combine the existential angst that dominated the work of le Brocquy’s friend, Francis Bacon with a humanistic celebration of the innocence of youth. Writing in 1950, James White suggested that the toddler in Child with Doll was based on the figure of a girl hugging a doll in The Fair at Bray Head, 1949. Arguing that from this moment the figure of the child took on a symbolic significance within le Brocquy’s imagination, White wrote that the child became “... charged with a meaning of its own as a symbol of the lost children of Europe, wandering through a cruel world with wonder and only half-understanding. When it was recreated as a separate work (Child with Doll), the doll remained with it, as a symbol of yet another future generation that these children carry with them. In short, the child with doll is a parable of recurrent life, springing up through the ruins as fireweed grows on the rubble of a bombed house”.1 Le Brocquy has recalled how he heard of the horrors of the Holocaust first hand from his friend, the French–Jewish art dealer Charles Gimpel. Both the Traveller series and the stark interiors of the Grey Period works have been related to the multitudes of refugees displaced during World War II and its aftermath. 2 The connections between Child with Doll and the horrors of war are strengthened by an inscription on the verso of the work which reads Homage á Jankel Adler Born in 1895 into an Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, Adler made his home in Germany until the rise of National Socialism forced him to flee, firstly to France, and then to London. Adler, whom le Brocquy met in London in 1947, soon became both a friend and an inspiration to the young Irish man. Despite the contrasts in their ages and backgrounds, these two artists from opposite ends of Europe combined a strong allegiance to their cultural roots with an appreciation of the international avant-garde. The influence of Picasso is particularly palpable in Adler’s work and although le Brocquy knew his work first hand, in Child with Doll Picasso’s influence is filtered through the eyes of Adler. While Child with Doll does not appear to relate directly to a particular work by Adler, the subject of the wandering child of le Brocquy’s homage can be connected to the plight of Adler’s family. All of Adler’s sisters and brothers perished in the Holocaust, leaving only a niece and a nephew to join the orphans of Europe. One of a series of works that resulted from the technical experim