Maurice MacGonigal PRHA (1900-1979) Rainstorm, Clogherhead (August 1942) Oil on board, 29.5 x 40cm (11.5 x 15.75'') Signed. Inscribed with title verso The Artist was introduced to the area of...

Maurice MacGonigal PRHA (1900-1979) Rainstorm, Clogherhead (August 1942) Oil on board, 29.5 x 40cm (11.5 x 15.75'') Signed. Inscribed with title verso The Artist was introduced to the area of Oriel and North Dublin by his lifelong friend Bulmer Hobson, as early as 1927. From the mid 1930s he leased a house at Loughshinney and he alternated between that area and Connemara until the late 1940s. The artist liked the landscape of Fingal and the Kingdom of Oriel,as he found that the light was very similar to that of Connemara with the underlying sand refracting light in the same way as the landscape of Connemara. Regular guests in that period were Dermod O'Brien PRHA,and his eventual successor in the RHA Presidency, James Sleator, the Architect Fred Hicks,the writer Myles Mordaunt,Bulmer Hobson as well as James Ryan TD and his wife Mair?n Creegan who was a writer of Childrens stories,Kenneth Reddan a district Justice. His Cousin's widow Margaret Clarke RHA, Beatrice Lady Glenavy RHA,Tim Mulhall the head Attendant in the Metropolitan (later National)College of Art and George Atkinson RHA it's director, Major Bryan Cooper MP (later TD) and his own Parents as it was near enough even during the war to travel to the area fairly easily. After his marriage he and his wife continued there until by 1943 the amount of air traffic,and some ''dog fights'' between German & British aircraft made the family sufficiently nervous as to leave the area. The house in Loughshinney was in fact two houses, one as a studio space and the second as the residential accommodation. It is a summer day and a long band of rain can be seen moving across the sky and threatening the Capri blue water of the sea n the foreground. The Artist made a lot of work in that area and was fascinated by the rock formations to be found along the coast, with the myriad of inlets and sandy beaches, which together with the vernacular long houses to be found in the area(now mostly long gone)gave the landscape its particular interest for him. This is a happy sunny day far removed from the grim events taking place on the European mainland at that time, echoing instead the pastoral idyll of the North Eastern Coastal farming & fishing community still active at that time Ciar?n MacGonigal

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