Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 21st October 2019

40 32 Bridget Riley (b.1931) British Serpentine Study 3, Group A (1999) signed, titled and dated ‘99 gouache 39 x 38cm (15.4 x 15in) Provenance: Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin; Private Collection €40,000-60,000 (£35,398-53,097) With its vertical bands of colour, this original gouache painting is part of a series of works created by Riley to celebrate her major exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1999. The exhibition focused on Riley’s Op-Art work from the 1960’s and ‘70’s. This gouache, Serpentine Study 3 Group A, with its conscious homage to the Op- Art era, and of Victor Vasarely and Richard Anuszkiewicz, represents a culmination of Riley’s forty-year exploration of colour and optics, which began with a deep appreciation of the work of Pointillist artist Georges Seurat. In 1959, while still at the beginning of her career, Riley copied Seurat’s 1886 painting The Bridge at Courbevoie. Her own early versions of Seurat’s Pointillist landscapes evolved gradually into the accomplished geometric patterned colour combinations, particularly in the form of stripe paintings, that became her trademark as an artist. Later in the 1980’s, the reintroduction of diagonals into Riley’s compositions made her work more compelling and visually exciting. Born in London in 1931, Bridget Riley grew up in Lincolnshire where her father had a printing business. During World War II, Riley, her mother and her sister were evacuated to Cornwall, where they lived in a cottage not far from the sea at Padstow. After the war she attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College, before enrolling at Goldsmiths College of Art in 1952. During the following years, Riley cared for her father who had been in a serious car crash, and worked as an illustrator for the J. Walter Thompson advertising company. She also taught art at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Harrow. In the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s she taught at art schools, including Loughborough, Hornsea and Croydon. Acutely aware of the lack of studio space in London, in 1968, Riley and her partner Peter Sedgwick founded the organisation SPACE, to provide these facilities at a reasonable cost to artists. Riley has had an exceptionally distinguished career as an artist, with works by her in most major museums in the United Kingdom, the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Dia Centre in New York. In 1968 she won the International Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale. Peter Murray, September 2019