Lot 81: Edward McGuire RHA (1932-1986) Portrait of Anthony

Edward McGuire RHA (1932-1986) Portrait of Anthony Cronin Oil on canvas, 60 x 72cm (23.6 x 28.3") Signed with initials and dated 1977 Provenance: From a Private Dublin Collection who purchased through The Dawson Gallery. Exhibited: RHA Annual Exhibition 1978, catalogue no. 103 (NFS). Also included in the 1977 RTE film on McGuire. Literature: "Edward McGuire" by Brian Fallon and others, p. 96, full page illulstration p.97. Catalogue raisonne no. 89. Anthony Cronin (born 1925 in County Wexford) is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award (1983) for his contribution to Irish literature. He is a founding member of Aosdána, was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 2003 and is a member of its governing body, the Toscaireacht. He lives in Dublin. Anthony Cronin wrote of this painting: "Eddie first talked about doing a portrait of me in his studio in Leeson Street, where we sometimes went back to have another drink or a meal out of the pressure cooker which in those days was his solution to the eating question. H was then painting what I think was almost his first portrait in oils, the one of Garech de Brun. He had Garech's Aran pullover on a lay figure and he seemed to be months at it, painting it thread by thread. 'I want to do you next,' he would say. I would make a joke about not having any clothes to spare that he could work from in my absence and we would agree that I might manage to wear a shirt I could leave behind. In fact I was not next and he had begun to live in Sandycove and painted quite a series of literary figure before he got around to me. Every time we met he would talk about beginning immediately, and after he had done Francis Stuart he started to phone me late at night to say he wanted to do me in a white shirt like Francis, so that we could hang in the Municipal together. He even did a pen and ink drawing one day in McDaid's; but there was no painting and I am afraid that I had begun to make comments about others being preferred before me while he was still protesting his intent. I think he wanted to paint something freer than the very meticulous portraits he had done up to then, but he did not know quite how to go about it. Much of our conversation at the time was concerned with the necessity for an easier and less uptight approach. 'You should start tight and work loose', he would say. I finally got painted because he was the subject of a television programme and it would appear that after the first day he refused to talk any more to the television interviewers, declaring that he would talk to me while he painted me instead. So he had to begin and the first session was in front of the cameras while he did the charcoal drawing that formed the basis of the painting. He called the almost monochromatic result his 'brown study' and I think it was actually a new departure for him at the time, though the objects in the foreground were as tightly painted as ever. I don't know why he chose the cooking pot and the old fashioned iron. I suspect he just wanted to paint them, but maybe there is a faint adverten e to Leeson Street, the meals we had out of the pressure cooker and the shirt I never did leave behind." (This memoir is taken from the book "Edward McGuire" with the kind permission of Anthon Cronin.)