Beschreibung:

Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) A Coastal Landscape with Thatched Cottages Oil on canvas, 51 x 66cm (20 x 26'') Signed Provenance: Purchased in these rooms, 1978 by John P. Reihill, Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin Exhibited: Irish Art from Private Collections 1870-1930, Wexford Arts Centre, 1977, Cat. No. 33 Though an excellent portraitist in the academic tradition, it is for landscape painting, particularly views of the West of Ireland, that Ulsterman Frank McKelvey made a national reputation. Dr. S.B. Kennedy has identified this view as looking east from Falcarragh towards Dunfanaghy, Co. Donegal. As with so many of McKelvey's works, it realises with great fidelity the character and mood of the West of Ireland landscape. Sable, ochre, and mist-green tones describe the foreground which is strongly and confidently painted while the distant peninsulas, in tones of blue-grey, assume a remote ethereal quality. The disposition of masses is well thought out and the light and dark areas are cleverly disposed. Typically, McKelvey has included a genre element, which consists of a donkey standing patiently by, while the creels on its back are loaded with turf by two figures. Born in Belfast, son of a painter and decorator, (it is interesting that a number of other successful Northern artists came from a similar background), he worked as a poster designer before entering the Belfast School of Art. There, he displayed an exceptional talent for drawing and won the Sir Charles Brett and Fitzpatrick Prizes for figure drawing. One of his first commissions, funded by a local businessman, for the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, (now the Ulster Museum), was to translate faded photographs of Old Belfast views into effective watercolours. These subsequently proved to be highly popular with visitors. A talented portrait painter, he was represented at the Irish Portraits by Ulster Artists exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1927. He first exhibited at the RHA in 1918 becoming a full member in 1930 and of the RUA, (then known as the Belfast Arts Society), in the same year. He was a most prolific painter, producing numerous river and coastal views from Donegal, Connemara, and Antrim along with many farmyard scenes. Significantly, the Exhibition of Irish Art in Brussels, held in 1930, included no fewer than three of his paintings, a measure of his stature. In 1937 he had his first one-man show in Dublin at the Victor Waddington Galleries and his work was also shown in New York prior to World War II. An exhibition entitled Contemporary Irish Paintings, which toured North America in 1950 also included one of his landscapes. Although he worked in Northern Ireland all his life, from 1951 he made frequent painting trips to France. Compared with those of Craig and other contemporaries, McKelvey's landscapes are less romantic, less concerned with mood and feeling than with describing the essential visual effect of a scene, although after the mid-1930s his work becomes more atmospheric. John Hewitt suggests that ''in landscape his work harked back to an older tradition than Craig, to quieter colour, to a kind of Constable-impressionism. It is most effective in its rendering of evening light over level estuary-plains, out of a lowering sky, or coming in from the sea with water flooding across the sands.'' From a younger generation than Craig, by 1925 McKelvey had reached the same level of recognition and became, with the latter and William Conor one of Ulster's most prominent painters. Furthermore, his West of Ireland views together with those of Lamb and Craig dominated the field of landscape painting between the wars and perhaps more than any other, approximated to a genuine Irish School. Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) A Coastal Landscape with Thatched Cottages Oil on canvas, 51 x 66cm (20 x 26'') Signed Provenance: Purchased in these rooms, 1978 by John P. Reihill, Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin Exhibited: Irish Art from Private