Lot 230: Marian Jeffares (1916-1986) BOREDOM inscribed on

Marian Jeffares (1916-1986) BOREDOM inscribed on reverse with title and artist's name and address (34 Highfield Road, Dublin 6) oil on canvas board 61 by 81cm., 24 by 32in. Provenance: Artist's studio; Brock Fine Art, Blackrock, Co. Dublin Literature: Myles Byrne, 'Marian Jeffares', Status, September 1981, pp. 40-42 Born Marian Bragg in south London, she was a relation of William Henry Bragg and Sir Lawrence Bragg (co-winners of the 1915 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on x-rays). She studied at Blackheath Art School and for five years at the Slade. She also studied design at Chelsea Polytechnic, and in 1939 took a degree in art history at the Courtauld Institute, studying under Sir Anthony Blunt. Shortly prior to WWII she married Ernest Holfenth, to whom she had a child, but the marriage barely outlasted the war. During the intervening years she worked at the War Office in London and taught art in Manchester. Her second marriage was to George Jeffares, an Irishman who lectured in languages at the Royal Naval College in Devon. Together they travelled to China for eighteen months, and Chinese scenes and subjects would preoccupy her throughout the early 1950s. In 1949 they settled in Kimmage, Co. Dublin and Jeffares began showing work at the IELA. In 1956 she had the first of fifteen works hung at the RHA and the following year, from an address in Rathgar, began showing at the annual Oireachtas art exhibitions. She also continued to exhibit in London, sending work to the Leicester Galleries in August 1957. Solo exhibitions were held with the Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, in 1956 and 1960. During the 1960s and '70s her subject matter focussed ' rather unfashionably ' on social issues such as unemployment, women's rights, and Republican prisoners. She died in 1986, survived by two sons.