Lot 76: Hilda Roberts HRHA (1901-1982)

Hilda Roberts HRHA (1901-1982) THREE ACHILL GIRLS

oil on canvas

signed lower right; bearing original Taylor Galleries framing label on reverse

69 by 89cm., 27 by 35in.

Exhibited:'Hilda Roberts HRHA: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture from early 1920's-1978', Taylor Galleries, Dublin, 25 May - 9 June 1979, catalogue no. 1 (as Three Little Girls), illustrated on front cover of catalogue.

Born into a Dublin Quaker family, Hilda Roberts excelled at art whilst at school and received her first artistic commission at the age of seventeen, when she illustrated the Lorimers' translation of Persian Tales. In 1919 she enrolled at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she was taught by Patrick Tuohy. He later introduced Roberts to the New York dealer Helen Hackett, who in 1929 commissioned Roberts to paint what was to become her best known portrait, that of George Russell 'AE', now in the collection of the Ulster Museum, Belfast. The Russell portrait was widely exhibited in America, including at the 1933 World Trade Fair in Chicago. Roberts continued to specialise in portraiture. In 1929 she spent some months on Achill Island, painting portraits of local children. Her first solo show was held later that year at the Dublin Painters Gallery and featured these Achill portraits, exhibited as genre studies under titles such as The White Pinafore and Brigid. This latter work may well be the same Little Brigid, 1929, which is reproduced in the Crawford Gallery's retrospective catalogue of Robert's work. That work was certainly a study for the present larger composite work, in which Brigid is flanked by two little girls, presumably her sisters.