Maurice MacGonigal PRHA (1900-1979) Beached Fishing Boats at Loughshinny Oil on canvas, 61 x 68.5cm (24 x 27'') Signed Provenance: Purchased by the current owner in these rooms 'Important Irish...

Maurice MacGonigal PRHA (1900-1979) Beached Fishing Boats at Loughshinny Oil on canvas, 61 x 68.5cm (24 x 27'') Signed Provenance: Purchased by the current owner in these rooms 'Important Irish Art Sale' 15th March 1989, Cat No. 105 The boats from Rush are drawn up onto the beach looking towards Loughshinney pier which was built in the 1830s and in the background can be seen a group of houses, some thatched. The artist uses the hawsers and anchor chains and their cast shadows as the foreground frame through which one sees the fishing boats and trawlers on an ebbed tidal strand. The figures are used with the ropes and chains to give the scale to the boats and the distant houses. A water colour version of this work was sold through these salerooms in 1989. The artist loved the area for the quality of light, which derives from the sandy soil which gives it a luminescence or glow similar to that of that part of Connemara in and around Roundstone and Ballyconneely The typical long house with outshots and thatch appealed to his sense of architectural order and was seen in the last Irish Art Sale in these rooms with the charming work of Lusk. The scale of the houses and that they were snuggled down to withstand the winter gales and prevailing wind gives and gave a scale of building which is unparalleled in Ireland except perhaps for Wexford. Also the painter's sense of the natural building language as well as the order of the fields, trees and farming land appealed greatly to his visual sense of things in the Fingal and Oriel areas. When I was a child I'd be brought to see the sites he'd loved so much ..and as far north as Anagassen or Dunleer, to Mornington, Rush, Loughshinney, Laytown and Clougherhead...he thought it all marvellous( and he could do a marvellous Anagassen accent....with it's broadest vowel sounds.. ...at the beginning of the War his friends like Dermod O'Brien PRHA and James Sleator PRHA would come and stay..and paint.. and of course he was friendly with as well as a teacher to Paddy Leonard ARHA(who had such a success recently in these sales rooms) and during the War he'd invited his mother in law to stay in the hope that a wandering fighter plane might decide on a straffing raid..but no such luck...and when my mother laughingly was told to take her mother along the beach for a long walk wearing bright clothes it fairly caused ructions.......and no bombers came....! Some years ago the National Gallery of Ireland purchased at auction a beautiful work of his Fishing boats at Clogherhead which they have made into a postcard being sold in the shop and I found the original large drawing of the composition in his papers which I gave to the gallery so that the work would be complete in its references. Ciar?n MacGonigal November 2006

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