Lot 32: VARIOUS PROPERTIES ALOYSIUS O'KELLY B. 1853 FEEDING HENS, WEST OF IRELAND

signed l.r.: al.o.Kelly

oil on canvas

EXHIBITED

Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1880, no.150;
Dublin, The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Aloysius O'Kelly, 24 November 1999 - 29 January 2000, no.6
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Niamh O'Sullivan, Aloysius O'Kelly, Re-Orientations, Painting, Politics and Popular Culture, exh.cat., The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 24 November 1999 - 29 January 2000, pp.17-20, illustrated in colour on p.18
CATALOGUE NOTE

Within the wider social and political context of the mid to late 19^th century, the local Irish peasantry were consistently perceived as poor, in need of constant support and, as Punch magazine described in 1846, they appeared as 'monuments to national idleness' (as quoted by O'Sullivan, op.cit., p.20). Feeding the Hens, West of Ireland is important in offering an optimistic antithesis.

Exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1880, it was O'Kelly's example to the public of a more prosperous local family from the West of Ireland, most likely Connemara where O'Kelly visited in the late 1870s and 80s. The fisherman in his traditional tam o'shanter, his collarless under-shirt, léine ghals or léine gorm, and his báscóta the thick light coloured jacket, returns home to his family with a full basket of fish. In contrast to the plight of O'Kelly's Seaweed Gatherers, Connemara, here, the West of Ireland family appear as an ideal social entity united as a picture of Irish happiness.

61 by 47cm.; 24 by 18 1/2 in.