Two Heads

The single female figure increasingly became the staple of O'Neill's work. Margarita (see lot 116) has the dramatic, electric palette he used in the 1950s, although it is more muted here, and the stylised treatment of the southern European face is redolent of the Italian primitive painters O'Nell admired. The present lot is a much sweeter painting, marking a move away from intense high romantic emotion towards the sentimentality which was to characterise the flat, doll-like figures of O'Neill's later painting.

We are very grateful to Dickon Hall for providing the above catalogue entry.