Mainie Jellett (1897 - 1944) Study for Achill Horses II Pencil and gouache, 22.2 x 36.9cm (8.75 x 14.5'') Signed and dated 1939, also signed and inscribed title verso, Artist's label verso ...
Mainie Jellett (1897 - 1944) Study for Achill Horses II Pencil and gouache, 22.2 x 36.9cm (8.75 x 14.5'') Signed and dated 1939, also signed and inscribed title verso, Artist's label verso This study is part of a series of work depicting horses roaming freely in the countryside, which Jellett made in the later stages of her prematurely short career. She began to move away from the pure abstract works of the 1920s to approach more representational subjects, albeit still preoccupied by colour balance, internal rhythm and relation of shapes and forms to each other within the composition. There began to be a more organic form to her paintings of this time, and she used colours and forms with their groundings in nature, although not totally naturalistic - ''I do not deny nature. I would not; but I wish to copy nature not in her external aspects but in her internal organisation'' (Artists' Vision, p51). Much of her subject matter from this period of time is inspired by the western landscape, and her time spent in Achill. She chose the traditional setting of the noble and romantic West of the country, which was a favoured topic for her male contemporaries, and developed it in her individual Cubist style. The composition of this painting shows five horses in different positions, each individually positioned in the landscape but connected with it and each other through the unifying curves linking the abstract shapes of the background. The tonal ranges of the painting are in mainly earthy colours, grounding the abstraction of form and composition in nature, while the shading on the horses' bodies is sharply delineated. While the subject of this series was in some ways a departure for the artist, some commentators such as Charles Sidney in The Bell remarked on the continuing influence of her former teacher Albert Gleizes, whose woodcut illustrations of the early 1920s also featured similar horses' heads. Her success in creating a new visual language for rural Ireland was confirmed by the fact that Jellett was chosen to create murals representing the life and people of Ireland for the Free State's pavilion at the Glasgow Empire Exhibition in 1938. One of the ten scenes depicted was horses grazing in the West of Ireland. A painting of the subject, Achill Horses II, (1938, National Gallery of Ireland) was shown at the Glasgow exhibition and was also included in the Irish pavilion at the New York World Fair the following year. This study from 1939 shows her continued fascination with, and development of, the subject.
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