Harry Clarke RHA (1889-1931) From the Song of Wandering Aengus Pen and black ink heightened with white, 29.25 x 20.25cm, (11.5 x 8'') Signed and dated 1913 Provenance: Jane French and thereafter...
Harry Clarke RHA (1889-1931) From the Song of Wandering Aengus Pen and black ink heightened with white, 29.25 x 20.25cm, (11.5 x 8'') Signed and dated 1913 Provenance: Jane French and thereafter in the Collection of Dr & Mrs J.B. Kerney. Exhibited: The Royal Hibernian Academy 1914, Cat. No. 486 The Mills Hall Exhibition 1929, Cat. No. 12 under the title ''Little Silver Fish'' Harry Clarke Exhibition, Trinity College Dublin Nov/Dec 1979, Cat. No. `15B. In her monograph and catalogue for the 1979 exhibition Nicola Gordon-Bowe wrote: Although never labelled as such, this illustration must surely be an illustration to the first verse of the same poem, where Aengus 'went out to the hazel wood,/ beacuse a fire was in my head' (the aureole shining around his head is formed by the lavish plumage of the peacock, which he supports on his raised knee, whose tail is curled around his lantern). In the beautifully balanced and deceptively simple composition, the velevt black of the night is illuminated by 'moth-like stars...flickering out', and 'white moths...on the wind'. He has caught the 'little silver trout' with 'a berry hooked...to a thread', tied to the hazel wand he has 'cut and peeled'. The 'hazel wood' stretches into the distance on the far bank of the black river, lit by advancing stars. The taulty willowy, androgynous Aengus is reminiscent not only of Beardsley's Siegfried, but also of a more directly Japanese figure, in his linear treatment and costume. One cannot avoid comparing the tall, slenderly muscular androgyne, whose contours are suggested with dots, with Beardsley's unlikely Siegfried (1892-3, reproduced in the Studio, vol. 1, no. 1, April 1893) and similarly the stylized outline of the river bank, the black water and the unearthly vegetation in both pictures.