Lot 133: Michael Augustine Power O'Malley (1878-1946)

Michael Augustine Power O'Malley (1878-1946) Dongeal Farm Homestead Oil on board, 40 x 49.5cm (15¾ x 19½'') Signed Babcock Galleries, New York gallery label verso Born in Co.Waterford, Michael Augustine Power O'Malley studied art in France and Italy before finally settling in America where his teacher was Robert Henri who had painted on Achill. O'Malley returned to Ireland periodically and was awarded first prize in landscape painting at Aonach Tailteann in 1923. He exhibited in a group show of Irish art in Brussels in 1930. There were 38 works by him included in the 1935 New Jersey show including titles such as ''A Donegal Bog'',''Aran Fisherman'' and ''Spanish Parade - Galway'' which shows he traveled all along the West Coast. Other artists included in the New Jersey Show were Jack B. Yeats, Sean Keating and George Russell. He exhibited several paintings with an Irish theme at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London in 1939 such as ''The Kerry Piper'' '' The Connemara Man'' and ''Clearing up Achill'' . The critic Royal Cortissoz writing in The New York Herald Tribune wrote '' Mr O'Malley has found light and air in Ireland and has got them into his pictures. A more winning transcription of the Irish scene has not come out of any man's studio''.