Beschreibung:

TINKER CHILD BENEATH A LIGHT BULB, circa 1952-54 Louis le Brocquy HRHA (b.1916)
Signature: signed upper left; inscribed by present owner on reverse; with le Brocquy's Albert Studios (established, spring 1952) business card displayed in the mount; inscribed on reverse "Bought in Folio 60s (late), Westbourn Park" Medium: ink and collage with gouache on paper Dimensions: 47 by 40cm., 18.5 by 15.7 5in. Provenance: Purchased by the present owner in the 1960s in Westbourne Park, London; Private collection This understated work by le Brocquy is reminiscent of the artist’s Tinker Period circa 1945 to 1948 as well as indicative of aspects of his Grey Period which spanned the early years of the 1950s. The... e child figure is recurrent in le Brocquy’s oeuvre during this period and the little girl in particular recalls the figures from several other works from that period such as, Fairground Under Bray Head (1949), A Family (1951) and Caroline (1956). The diminutive Caroline which was first displayed in 1957 was described by John Montague as, "...Aristotelean in its premise that the eyes are the gateway to the soul, save that here the whole indistinct face provides that gateway." This work calls to mind the innocence and openness Montague described. The inclusion of the light bulb and the naive style in which the work is depicted is evocative of Picasso’s Guernica (1937) which employed the same object to illuminate the subjects of the work and to complement the angular composition of the work as le Brocquy has done here. With thanks to Pierre le Brocquy for his assistance in cataloguing this work more