Lot 86: Robert James Enraght Moony RBA (1869-1946) A FAERY

Robert James Enraght Moony RBA (1869-1946) A FAERY SCENE AT SPRINGTIME signed lower right and again in monogram upper right tempera on canvas 41 by 51cm., 16 by 20in. exhibited: Possibly exhibited at the NEAC, London, 1916, no. 234 under the title "I dreamed the sleeping spring arose with half closed eyes" with an unfinished head of a woman on reverse. born in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, into the land-owning classes, Enraght Moony was educated at Galway Grammar School and in Devon. During the 1890s he went to Paris where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), and also travelled through Italy where, according to Nicola Gordon Bowe, he appears to have come under the influence of the Italian Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-99). He first exhibited at the RHA in 1903 and at the RA in 1909. His work straddled a number of genres and styles, combining the heightened realism of the Pre-Raphaelites (see for instance his illustrations for Kenneth Graham's The Golden Age of 1915), with the otherworldl 'faery' subject matter much in vogue in Ireland during the Literary Revival.