Louis Le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
Study of Fruit (1993)
Oil on canvas, 27 x 35cm (10½ x 13¾'')
Signed with initials; signed and dated (19)'93 and AR 622 verso

Exhibited: 'Louis le Brocquy:...

Louis Le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
Study of Fruit (1993)
Oil on canvas, 27 x 35cm (10½ x 13¾'')
Signed with initials; signed and dated (19)'93 and AR 622 verso

Exhibited: 'Louis le Brocquy: Studies of Fruit', The Taylor Galleries, Dublin, December 1993 - January 1994, Catalogue No.22, where purchased.

 

Louis le Brocquy was 77 years old when he painted Study of Fruit, and had already been painting for over fifty years, yet there is no diminution of energy or observational powers to be found in it. Instead the apples are painted with a vivacity and lightness of touch that radiates exuberance and joy in the moment.

 

He had been painting still life subjects from time to time since the 1960s. His paintings of lemons, usually single fruits, sometimes in pairs, might be thought of as studies for the composition and lighting of the ancestral heads and portrait images that he produced so prolifically during the same decades. Yet when asked why he painted his still life and bird pictures, he said, [p]erhaps this is simply a temporary release from the heads and their rather intense, reflective consciousness, their tragic aspect. A return to a simple state of being, emerging in its own nature, filling out its little volume of reality with the natural possibilities of its form.

 

In contrast to those paintings of lemons, where the form is isolated and still against a white ground, the fruits in this painting are brimming with life, the lightning flashes of colour, the sculptural handling of the fruits in the foreground and the deft, almost transparent treatment of the less-defined fruits to the rear. Despite le Brocquys typical white tonality, the painting bubbles with colour. For a simple, little painting of a simple subject, this is le Brocquy at his most baroque.

Our thanks to Catherine Marshall whose previous writings on the artist formed the basis of this catalogue entry.

 

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