Go Back Irish Art - 16 September 2003
THE BACK ROAD
Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974)
Showing Lot 91 of 248 Lot 90 - AUTUMN IN AN IRISH PARK View Full Listing Lot 92 - GARRON POINT FROM CUSHENDUN
Signature: signed lower left; original inscribed label on reverse
Exhibited: RHA, Dublin, 1956, catalogue no.1 (�60-0-0)
The Back Road was painted when McKelvey was sixty years of age and displays all the best qualities of his mature work. From a shaded road, dappled with light, the eye is drawn unerringly towards the gable-end of a simple farm building, with hens peck...Read more
The Back Road was painted when McKelvey was sixty years of age and displays all the best qualities of his mature work. From a shaded road, dappled with light, the eye is drawn unerringly towards the gable-end of a simple farm building, with hens pecking at the ground below in a golden glow of light. Dr S. B. Kennedy has written of McKelvey�s work of this period: �In these the subject-matter is unchanged from earlier decades, but the scale of colours is brighter than before and the brushwork is more delicate with at times a feathery quality to it... These compositions of the 1950s, too, represent a way of life on the eve of change, when farming began to assume its contemporary �industrial� character. The farm buildings depicted are traditional in style and construction, the chickens run freely about the farmyard, all exist in perpetual summer. It is the recording of such scenes that, apart from the aesthetic qualities of his art, makes the work of Frank McKelvey so appealing to us nowadays�. (S. B. Kennedy, Frank McKelvey, RHA, RUA: A Painter in His Time, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, p.70).