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

68 56 Louis Le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) Image of James Joyce (1992) signed lower left and dated (19)’92 with artist’s archive W1211 watercolour 64 x 49cm (25.25 x 19.25in) Provenance: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, where purchased by the present owner; Exhibited: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2002 €17,500-€25,000 (£15,625-£22,321) An encounter with painted Polynesian heads in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris in 1964 led Louis le Brocquy to embark on a series of paintings of ancestral heads. He also had in mind the Celtic notion of the head as a container that holds the spirit prisoner. The era of a straightforward portrait likeness was, he felt, over in the age of cinema and photography, of the multiplicity of imagery - and this was pre-internet. He conceived the idea of painting as a kind of archaeology of the mind, an attempt to attain a fragmentary grasp of the spirit of a living being. Within a year, he was already interested in using this approach to explore the image of James Joyce. Yeats and Beckett were to follow. The images are always tentative, always aspirational. They have, over the years, become trademark works.