Lot 52: Thurloe Conolly (1918-2016) PAINTING I

original label on reverse; inscribed with title, price of £22.10s.0d, artist's address in Bray, Co. Wicklow; also with original Waddington Galleries label on reverse

h:15 w:18in.

oil on masonite board

Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin;
Estate of Alan Malcolm Brush;
His sale, Richard D. Hatch & Associates, North Carolina, February 2007:
Private collection
Whyte's, 2 March 2009, lot 59;
Private collection

Born in 1918, the son of Constance Elizabeth Conolly (née Jeffares) and William, a structural engineer, Thurloe Conolly spent the first year of his life in Cork city. The family then moved to Dublin, where their next-door neighbours were Albert and Sybil le Brocquy, parents of Louis, with whom he was a member of The White Stag Group. He worked in an office from leaving school until 1941, spending his spare time painting and writing poetry. Once he began painting full time his work was exhibited widely: in 1943 at the IELA, at the 1944 Exhibition of Subjective Art in Dublin, and in 1945 at the first show in the Dublin Painters Gallery, as well as with The White Stag group. He had a one man show at Victor Waddington's Gallery in 1949, and a series of exhibitions in America including Boston and New York, as well as in England, Holland and Sweden. He lived in France from 1967 and faded from the Irish art scene.

Initially his work was figurative and romantic but a change of direction in 1948 showed a growing interest in pattern and abstraction. His influences were eclectic, from Klee and graffiti, to Oceanic and African art. His works from 1952 and 1953 were purely abstract, all titled Painting, of which the present is an importantly numbered "1". They are light in tone and palette, and employ much in the way of signs and signifiers, inscribed into the surface of the paint.Conolly said he liked to paint "things invisible to see"

A major retrospective was held in Dublin in 1993. He rarely returned to Ireland but did attend The White Stag exhibition in IMMA in 2005. The revival of interest in his work was spurred by the inclusion of early paintings, photo-montages and "Surrealoids" in the Crawford Art Gallery 2015/2016 exhibition Language of Dreams, and by a solo show, held at the same time, at the CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery, that featured more recent abstract works.