Press Release

10th June 2009

Aloysius O’Kelly Painting Sells for World Record Price at Adam’s Important Irish Art Sale in Association with Bonham’s

A painting by Aloysius O’Kelly depicting a West of Ireland domestic scene with a barefoot young woman spoon feeding her son sold for a world record price of €70,000 at James Adam’s June Important Irish Art Sale in association with Bonham’s. Expectation, West of Ireland, painted in the late 19th Century, romanticises the rural Irish population of the post famine years, with an abundance of potatoes shown in the bottom left corner, a glow in the fireplace, and flowers in full bloom on the window sill. During the 19th Century a superstition was commonly held that faeries would take away male children and leave changelings in their place, causing the widespread ritual of dressing boys as girls until puberty, as seen in this record breaking piece. It has been suggested that this may have been a personally poignant painting for the artist whose nephew and godchild had died at a similar age to the boy he painted in Expectation, West of Ireland. The previous record for O’Kelly’s work was set in 2005 at Sotheby’s. This evening’s results shows that Dublin remains the best place to sell Irish art.

Aloysius O’Kelly was born in Dublin in 1853 and moved to London at a young age. In 1874 he became one of the first Irish artists to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he received his training from Jean-Leon Gerome and Leon Bonnall. O’Kelly was also one of the initial Irish artists to spend time painting in Brittany, where he met Jules Bastien-Lepage. During the 1880s he was appointed specialist artist to the Illustrated London News, and travelled around Ireland as a political illustrator, having exhibited at the RHA twice in the previous decade. O’Kelly is possibly best known for his painting depicting Northern African scenes – a popular subject among European Romantic painters. In an unusual move, O’Kelly emigrated to New York in 1895 and changed his name to Arthur Oakley. Following this he continued to visit and exhibit in France, as well as in Chicago, Milwaukee and New York where he was a member of the Water-Colour Club. He returned to Ireland in 1927 for a period and died in New York in 1936.   

 

Aloysius O'Kelly (1853-1936)
Expectation, West of Ireland