Lot 90: Robert James Enraght-Moony RBA (1869-1946) NIGHT AND THE POET signed and dated [1912] lower left; inscribed on reverse tempera on board, laid onto

Robert James Enraght-Moony RBA (1869-1946) NIGHT AND THE POET signed and dated [1912] lower left; inscribed on reverse tempera on board, laid onto canvas 56 by 66cm., 22 by 26in. Exhibited: Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, U.S.A. (date unknown) 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 (1858-1899). He first exhibited at the RHA in 1903 and at the RA in 1909, showing at the latter a work which was possibly related to the present one, being titled 'The Lady and the Poet'. His work straddled a number of genres and styles, combining the heightened realism and somewhat stiffened poses of the Pre-Raphaelites (see for instance his illustrations for Kenneth Graham's The Golden Age of 1915), with the otherworldly "faery" subject matter much in vogue in Ireland during the Literary Revival. E3,000-4,000 (IR E2,300 3,100 approx.)