Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) Landscape in Co. Antrim Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 86.5cm (27 x 34'') Signed. Title inscribed Provenance: From the artist's personal collection; and thence by...

Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) Landscape in Co. Antrim Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 86.5cm (27 x 34'') Signed. Title inscribed Provenance: From the artist's personal collection; and thence by descent to the current owner Maírín Allen has written of the artist, 'For the most part, he paints or sketches direct from nature. His summers, spent in the country...are filled with amazing activity. As long as the light lasts he paints...making rapid oil sketches, which he may finish on the spot, or may expand on larger canvases at his leisure.' 'Landscape in Co. Armagh' c.1950-5 is typical of McKelvey's landscape work and it features a pastoral vista that offers a calm and contemplative mood. A small group of four cattle are depicted at a bend in the road beneath the trees. The entire composition is bathed in the light of high summer and there are strategically placed rays of sunlight on the road that lead the eye toward the cattle and also highlight the livestock itself. The trees to left foreground and right middle ground frame the landscape and McKelvey's expert treatment of skies completes the composition. McKelvey offers a more colourful twentieth century equivalent of Hugh Frazer's landscape vignettes in this appealing view of the Armagh countryside. S.B.Kennedy has observed 'In essence he was a Romantic...He had a sharp eye and could, with apparent ease, penetrate the essentials of his subject and set it down with a matching exactitude.' McKelvey made a significant contribution to Irish painting. In terms of the 'evolution of landscape painting in Ireland in those years it is notable how the driving force was an Ulster-inspired affair and its main protagonists - Paul Henry, J.H. Craig, Frank McKelvey, Charles Lamb - each had his own distinctive technique, yet collectively, as the Irish Times pointed out as early as 1925, they had the homogeneity of a distinct school.' (Kennedy). This painting was clearly a work that the artist himself rated highly. In a photograph of McKelvey at his home c.1960, the painting has pride of place above the mantelpiece with McKelvey standing before it. Marianne O'Kane Boal

View more View less