signed lower left
also signed, inscribed with title and dated 59 on the stretcher
oil on canvas, in the original frame
12 by 10 inches
Provenance:
Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles
Pat Gaines, Los Angeles and New York, purchased from the above
Private collection, New York
A rare and exquisite 'Presence' painting, from the artist's under-rated White Period.
In the summer of 1955, Louis le Brocquy was commissioned by Ambassador Magazine to visit Southern Spain. Dizzied by the fierce sunlight, he wrote: 'One day while passing through a village in La Mancha in shimmering heat, I stopped spellbound before a small group of women and children standing against a whitewashed wall. Here the intensity of the sunlight had interposed its own revelation, absorbing these human figures into its brilliance, giving substance only to shadow. From that moment I never perceived the human presence in quite the same way. I had witnessed light as a kind of matrix from which the human being emerges and into which it ambivalently recedes, with which it even identifies'.
Over the snowy winter of 1955-56, at his studios in Battersea, he began to explore the human figure in the light of this revelation. He steadily distilled the human form down its fundamental essence, its mundane substance bleached away by pure white light. The resulting Presence pictures, of which the present work is a perfect example, have long been under-rated in favour of the Heads, but this is finally beginning to change: three were featured in his show last year in Paris, and all were sold before the opening. These pictures are, to my mind, among le Brocquy�s most incisive and distinctive works, and this reassessment is long overdue.
Even at the age of 90, le Brocquy still excites more comment and controversy than any other Irish artist. He has consistently refused to settle into the conventional role of the dignified senior statesman of the art world: he continues to break boundaries and frustrate those who claim to know his work and his inspirations. The last few years have seen the development of a new kind of painting that has shocked many of those who are used to his earlier work, and the new paintings shown in London last year offered only further challenges to his critics. I have never been shy of saying that I consider le Brocquy to be a truly great painter and that I see his instinctive hatred of complacency as only another sign of this fact. There is no doubt that Ireland is gradually waking up to this fact of his importance, but to my mind most people still think of him as a great Irish painter. It is my conviction that the next few years will render this view ridiculous. In ten years time, I believe that le Brocquy's work will be exhibited, written about and sold in New York and Paris as much as in London and Dublin.
The commercial implications of this are obvious. We live in a time in which le Brocquy's work has been easy to buy and relatively affordable, but we are already seeing this situation beginning to change. Few experienced collectors think any longer of selling a le Brocquy: their energies are focussed instead on building up their holdings of his work. We have already seen prices beginning to rise at auction: the sale of Travelling Woman with Newspaper in 2000 for over �1 million pounds is well-known, but just as startling to complacent collectors was the �400,000 made by a portrait of Samuel Beckett at auction this year. There is no indication that this upward pressure is going to diminish, and the inevitable reassessment of le Brocquy's work by international critics and collectors will add to it by an exponential degree. It is a time to buy le Brocquy, and in that context this work looks like very good value indeed.
For more information on Louis le Brocquy, we would recommend the excellent website devoted to him and his work. Click here to visit www.le-brocquy.com.
