Lot 103: Muriel Brandt (née McKinley) RHA (1909-1981)

Muriel Brandt (née McKinley) RHA (1909-1981) FARMHOUSE WITH CHICKENS FEEDING, c.1934-35 signed 'Muriel Brandt' lower left; signed with her maiden name 'Muriel McKinley' lower right watercolour over pencil 17 by 27cm., 6.5 by 10.75in. Provenance: Taylor de Vere's, Dublin, 1993; Private collection Muriel McKinley, a Belfast born muralist, portrait artist and landscape painter was educated at Belfast College of Art and, on scholarship, at the Royal College of Art, London from 1934-37. In 1935 she married Frank Brandt, a designer in the Electricity Supply Board, and a few months prior to sitting her final exams for the ARCA diploma her daughter, Ruth, (illustrator and etcher, 1936-89) was born. In 1938 she initiated what developed into a forty-year long relationship with the RHA. Later, in 1943, she exhibited with the Watercolour Society of Ireland and this association, too, resulted in a submission of forty-one pieces up until her death in 1981. It is likely that Farmhouse with Chickens Feeding dates from Brandt's early years in London, circa 1934-35, when she would have still been using her maiden name to sign her works.