Lot 69: Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA (1904-1969) FIGURES IN MOONLIGHT signed lower right oil on canvas 61 by 47cm., 24 by 18.5in. E3,000-4,000 (IR

Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA (1904-1969) FIGURES IN MOONLIGHT signed lower right oil on canvas 61 by 47cm., 24 by 18.5in. E3,000-4,000 (IR E2,300-3,100 approx.) As a member of the Dublin Painters group, as well as a poet, playwright and owner of the Gayfield Press, Cecil Salkeld was at the forefront of the avant-garde in Irish arts and literature. He studied art in Kassell in the early 1920s, coming under the influence of Otto Dix and the New Objectivity movement. Upon returning to Dublin, he aligned himself immediately with the modernists, showing works with the New Irish Salon and the Radical Painters' Group among others. Reviewing an exhibition of his at the Victor Waddington Galleries in 1945, the Dublin Magazine commented on Salkeld's "original, sombre palette, intellectually rather than emotionally conceived". The present work is thought to date to the 1940s and may relate to a series of panels which Salkeld painted for Davy Byrne's pub, including one titled 'Night: Party at the End of the Day' (ref. Snoddy, pp.585-587).