Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 30th April 2018 at 6pm

22 Louis Le Brocquy HRHA ( - ) CrAnes surMoDeles (1965) signed ‘L Le Brocquy 1965’ on reverse and titled oil on canvas 41 x 33cm (16.14 x 12.99in) Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, Dublin (label verso); Whyte’s, Dublin 24th November 2008, Lot 52; Private Collection €30,000-50,000 (£26,086-43,478) Justly celebrated for his images of such Irish literary figures as W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, as well as many others, Louis le Brocquy’s achievement as an artist extends even further. The core of these works goes back to a moment in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris in the early 1960s when he chanced on a display of decorated Polynesian heads. The nature of conventional portraiture is that it captures a likeness at one moment in time. The problem that began to preoccupy le Brocquy was how to get to grips with the image behind this superficial image? Without getting too laboured, the point is that the person one is today is the result not only of a life lived to date, but also an inheritance, the accumulated family and cultural histories that have shaped a being in this current moment. Le Brocquy, self-taught as an artist, had grasped Cubism more comprehensively than any other Irish artist of his generation. Rather than trying to grasp multiple, spatial views of a subject, he thought, why not try to convey a sense of what lies behind the visage that we present to the world. This painting based directly on one of those Polynesian heads is one of his first attempts to probe this hidden territory and open it up to pictorial exploration. It led directly to his most famous and, in many ways, more familiar works. Aidan Dunne, March 2018