Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 29th April 2019

I rish & I nternational A rt M onday 29 th A pril 2019 at 6.00 pm 91 69 Philip Flanagan (b.1960) Seamus Heaney (1990) signed by both the artist and Seamus Heaney bronze on French limestone - numbered 2 from an edition of 9 60 x 24 x 26cm (23.5 x 9.5 x 10.25in) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner €10,000-€15,000 ($11,235-$16,853) (£8,474-£12,711) As an artist Philip Flanagan first came to public attention in the early 1990’s with a number of commissioned portrait heads of prominent Irish actors, writers, musicians, politicians and others. Flanagan explores not only the physicality of the sitter, but also quietly reveals the character within. ‘Seamus agreed to sit for me and we made it up in Donegal. I de- cided that, because I had such a limited time to make the head that I would make it more like a large charcoal drawing, in that I would keep everything very general - a very loose kind of modelling, but at the same time a tight framework of measurement under the surface, so that the head would not stray away from my intention to get a likeness, and to express Heaney’s personality. The emphasis on structure is a throwback to the artist’s early sculptural training in the ‘ Coldstream tradition’, that is, on precise observation and measure- ment of the forms of the figure, practised at the Camberwell School of art in London where Flanagan was a student in the early 1980’s. Dr. S.B. Kennedy, March 2019