Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) Feeding Chickens at The Back of the House Oil on board, 35.5 x 44.5cm (14 x 17½'') Signed Provenance: From the estate of the late James Gibson During the...

Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974) Feeding Chickens at The Back of the House Oil on board, 35.5 x 44.5cm (14 x 17½'') Signed Provenance: From the estate of the late James Gibson During the twenties, McKelvey regularly painted farmyard scenes, within which a woman, often accompanied by a child, would be engaged in scattering feed to surrounding chickens. Simply titled, examples include; 'Feeding Chickens' 1922, 'Feeding the Chickens' late 1920s, this painting 'The Back of the House' and later 'Farmyard, Co. Antrim' c1950-3 and 'Bridget's Hens' 1968. Around 1921, Frank McKelvey took a cottage at the Maze, Hillsborough, Co. Down and later after their marriage in 1924, he and his wife settled there. At this residence the McKelveys kept a large flock of hens that the artist used as subject-matter for his pictures. (In his papers he later wrote) '''It was through this opportunity that I was able to study poultry in all effects of sunlight - a subject in which I have always been deeply interested.'' Indeed, it is for his compositions of hens, often picking for food in the dappled sunlight of a farmyard, that McKelvey is most remembered by many admirers. Occasionally the McKelveys paid a visit, sometimes for a holiday, to the Murphy's farm in County Armagh and there he painted numerous studies of farmyard scenes, such as 'Feeding the Chickens' and other semi-genre scenes.' S.B Kennedy. 'The Back of the House' is an attractive work, carefully composed and rendered with a bright palette, dappled sunlight highlighting the main elements; the middle ground, the figures engaged in their domestic ritual and the cottage itself - the back of the house. Realist artists such as Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75) would evidently have been an influence on the artist in his attention shown to subjects drawn from everyday life and farming. Also the intimacy of the farmyard/orchard setting was one that Walter Osborne would have explored in works such 'Apple Gathering, Quimperlé' 1883 and such genre studies would have interested McKelvey, which he would then treat in his looser individual manner. The farmyard as a subject was one he revisited on many occasions for over forty years. Marianne O'Kane Boal

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