Lot 60: Michael Augustine Power O'Malley (1878-1946)Aran Woman with JugOil on canvas

Michael Augustine Power O'Malley (1878-1946)Aran Woman with JugOil on canvas, 76 x 61cm (30 x 24)Provenance: Collection Avis and the late Rockwell Gardiner (U.S.A); sold in these rooms Important Irish Art Sale 15th March 1990, Cat. No. 51 where purchased by current ownerMichael Augustine Power O'Malley was born in Co. Waterford in 1878. He emigrated to the United States of America where he studied painting under Walter Shirlaw (1838-1909), Robert Henri (1865-1929) and at the National Academy of Design, New York. He settled in Scarborough, New York. He returned a number of times on painting trips to the West of Ireland. His painting The Fisherman's Daughter reproduced in The Irish Art Review, Dec. 1912 indicates a solid academic training and is not unlike the work of Patrick Tuohy. O'Malley won first prize for landscape painting at Aonach Tailteann in 1924. He exhibited a painting entitled This is My Beloved Son in the Brussels Exhibition of Irish Art in 1930. An exhibition of his paintings was held at the Crawford Municipal School of Art, Cork in 1940. In the United States O'Malley established a reputation as a fine painter and etcher of Irish landscape and cottage interiors. He was a prize winner at the San Antonio Exhibition, Texas in 1927. His work was acquired by American museums and galleries, among them The Phillips Collection, Washington; The Library of Congress, Washington; and the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Irish Art, Vassar College, New York.