Two Irishmen

Details

Robert Colquhoun (1914-1962)
Two Irishmen
signed 'Colquhoun' (upper right)
oil on canvas
22½ x 16¼ in. (57.1 x 41.3 cm.)
Painted in 1946.

Provenance

A. J. McNeill Reid, whom purchased from the Lefevre Exhibition in September 1947.
Mr Kennedy-Martin.

Literature

The Green Book, Bristol, 1990, Vol. 3, No. 6, illustrated on the front cover; article by George Barker.

Exhibited

London, Lefevre Gallery, 1947, catlogue not traced.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

In 1946 Colquhoun spent eight weeks in Ireland and this subject matter of Irish people and rural life fed into his work. In the introduction to the 1958 Whitechapel exhibition Bryan Robertson described these works as, 'Irish family groups ... welded together into a kind of composite totem pole, with heads facing outwards into space' (see Exhibition catalogue, Robert Colquhoun, an exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints from 1942 to 1958, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, March - May 1958).

Many of Colquhoun's Irish paintings were exhibited at his fourth one-man show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1947 and Irish subject matter continued to appear in his works including Women in Ireland, 1958 (The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock).

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