Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 12th November 2018

64 53 Louis Le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) Cavanagh (1974) signed lower left and dated (19)’74 Aubusson tapestry - unique - produced by Tabars Freres & Soeurs, France No:2031 (label verso) 382 x 386cm (150 x 152in) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by an important private collector in 1974: Thence by Descent €100,000-€150,000 (£89,285-£133,928) Throughout the 1940s, Louis le Brocquy became interested in the emotional expressiveness of colour and the potential correspondence between colours and music. He wrote of using “major and minor ‘colour chords’ for their emotional resonance.” In 1948, he was one of several painters invited to produce designs for tapestry by the Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers. He was enthralled by the medium, but rather then pursuing the conventional practice of having skilled weavers reproduce painted cartoons with coloured thread, he was influenced by the great Jean Lurçat, who he regarded as a mentor. Lurçat championed the reintroduction of pre-Renaissance tapestry techniques, and le Brocquy was instinctively drawn to his approach. Having been commissioned to produce several further tapestries, he made linear cartoons (or patterns), based on his paintings, with a numerical code specifying colours throughout the compo- sition. Thus, rather than being a version of an original, the tapestry was a unique work in itself. They were made by Atelier Tabard at Aubusson. When he made his celebrated brush and ink drawings for Thomas Kinsella’s The Táin in 1969, he realized that the black-and-white calligraphic images were perfect for translation into tapestry. Atelier René Duché at Aubusson made a series of black-and-white works, culminating in an absolutely monumental piece, The Táin, Army Massing, for the RTE studio building. Then, le Brocquy brilliantly applied the fruits of his 1940s explorations of colour with another monumental work, The Táin, made by Atelier Tabatd for the PJ Carroll building in 1970. A Táin is a raiding party and le Brocquy visualised a host of co-operative but rug- gedly independent individuals with an informal grid of heads, each distinctive, rather than a formal, regimented army. He emphasises this point with the dazzling use of a spectrum of primary and secondary colours that pulses and flares through the composition. In the 1970 Táin, the heads are arrayed against a single back- ground colour. In time, le Brocquy introduced a variable luminosity, so that the background seems to radiate light that shines through and illuminates the warriors’ heads. These works rank among his finest achievements and, not least given its dramatic scale, this example is one of the most impressive and important. Aidan Dunne, September 2018