Aloysius O' Kelly (1851-1926) Boats and Wooded Harbour Scene, Pont-Aven Oil on canvas, 68 x 48cm (26.75 x 18.75'') Signed Julian Campbell has identified this location as being the view of the...

Aloysius O' Kelly (1851-1926) Boats and Wooded Harbour Scene, Pont-Aven Oil on canvas, 68 x 48cm (26.75 x 18.75'') Signed Julian Campbell has identified this location as being the view of the harbour, Le Port en Amont and the town of Pont-Aven from downstream - Irish Arts Review 1996 P83. Exhibited: 1984 The National Gallery of Ireland ''The Irish Impressionists'' Cat No. 26 and toured to Ulster Museum (label verso) 1985; 1999/2000 The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin ''Aloysius O' Kelly : Re- orientations''' Exhibition Cat. No. 21 (label verso) Literature: ''The Irish Impressionists'' by Julian Campbell NGI 1984 P165 (illustrated) Aloysius O'Kelly in Brittany, by Julian Campbell, Irish Arts Review, 1996 P83 (Illustrated) ''Aloysius O'Kelly: Re-Orientations'' By Dr Niamh O'Sullivan 1999 Full page illustration P 48 Aloysius O'Kelly - Art, Nation, Empire; Dr Niamh O'Sullivan, 2010, Catalogue Raisonn?, cat. no. 72 (p293), full page illustration p170 Aloysius O'Kelly was one of the first Irish artists to go to Brittany, along with Augustus Burke, followed by many other Irish artists over the next half century. In the late nineteenth century, the remote port of Pont-Aven was about a day and a half's journey from Paris. The village comprised a small community of farmers, millers and fishermen. The Aven river was used to drive the mills of the village, and the port lies four miles up the estuary from the sea. Painted in the late 1870s, O'Kelly shows the village nestled in the surrounding woods, with the moored fishing boats reflected in the harbour, from downstream. He captured the distinctiveness of the fishing village, to the extent that at the turn of the century, the production of the first picture postcards of Pont-Aven feature a scene that bears a remarkable similarity to his painting. As the postcard producers took their cue from the artists, the locations became attractive to tourists, thereby encouraging the artists to paint the same locations, and even the same models, over and over. Notwithstanding the apparent naturalism of these images, they were thus, in many respects, contrived. The Monthly Illustrator (4, 2 (1895)) described Breton autumns as emitting 'a soft, pearly, luminous colour giving qualities of opalescent light to the landscape and enveloping everything in a tender tone of sentiment and poetry, a joy to look at and an inspiration to the painter.' In contrast to the dense darkness of some of his interiors, O'Kelly's winter landscapes emanate a chilly luminescence. Clearly painted sur le motif, the treatment of the natural elements is close to the work of his American friend, Hugh Bolton Jones. Dr Niamh O'Sullivan, May 2012

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