George Campbell RHA (1917-1979)
Dull Day, Moore Street
Oil on canvas, 50 x 35.5cm (20 x 14'')
Signed; signed and inscribed on label verso

Provenance: Sold through Victor Waddington Galleries,...

George Campbell RHA (1917-1979)
Dull Day, Moore Street
Oil on canvas, 50 x 35.5cm (20 x 14'')
Signed; signed and inscribed on label verso

Provenance: Sold through Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin to the collector F. L Vickerman; Private Collection.

 

Exhibited: George Campbell Recent Paintings, Victor Waddington Galleries, 1949, Cat No 23.

 

In 1947, George and Madge Campbell moved from Belfast into a flat at 42 Oakley Road in the South side of Dublin. Arthur Campbell stayed with his brother in Dublin and they went on walkabouts making sketches and taking photographs of the inner city. In Arthur Campbells papers, an unidentified typed document by George Campbell recalls a visit to Moore Street,

 

Next morning found us in Moore Street, armed for painting. The same blue

haze was there to give the other world atmosphere that we wanted. Within an

hour or two we had gathered enough material in the way of sketches to keep us

at work for several months. (PRONI D/4122/H/19)

 

Campbells style in the late 1940s was influenced by Jack Butler Yeatss vigorous treatment of paint. Brush work was loose and energetic and his palette was characteristically vivid in colour. The Moore Street series were exhibited in solo and group shows in 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1951. Commenting on the Campbells exhibition in 1949, one critic noted, In one moment he is vividly impressionistic as in Dull Day in Moore Street (Irish Times, 20/5/49). Campbell may have first visited Moore Street long before he became an artist. In August, 1939, he wrote a short essay in the Irish Travel magazine about a cycling trip to Killarney under the title, A Wheel to Killarney, A Cycling Trio from Belfast. Staying overnight in a youth hostel in Mountjoy square, it is likely he cycled to the market street while he stayed in the inner city.

 

Karen Reihill

October, 2017

 

 

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