Lot 31
  • 31

GEORGE RUSSELL, CALLED AE | Carlo Point Edge

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • George Russell, called AE
  • Carlo Point Edge
  • signed with monogram l.r.
  • oil on canvas
  • 54 by 81.5cm., 21¼ by 32in.

Provenance

Christie’s, London, 20 May 1999, lot 76

Exhibited

Washington, John F. Kennedy Center, Irish Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns, 13 - 28 May 2000, illustrated p.86;
Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, A Century of Irish Painting: Selections from the Brian P. Burns Collection, 3 March - 29 April 2007, illustrated p.93

Condition

Original canvas. The work appears very good overall condition. Minor surface abrasion in lower left corner. UV light reveals some retouchings in the upper right, upper left and lower left corners. Also four minor flecks of retouching in the sky near the centre of the upper edge. Held in a gilt moulded frame, ready to hang.
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Catalogue Note

Carlo Point Edge probably depicts a scene at Cartron Point, on Blacksod Bay in Co. Mayo. In this coastal scene, the sun is setting, disappearing behind blue clouds above a flat coastline. In the foreground, oblivious of the glorious sunset, a boy he bends over the seaweed-covered rocks, probably foraging for cockles and mussels, or collecting kelp to use as a fertiliser.  Born in County Armagh in 1867, Russell came from a middle-class family. His father, an accountant, moved to Dublin in 1868. Russell enrolled in the Metropolitan School of Art, where he met fellow-student William Butler Yeats, with whom he developed a friendship that later veered into rivalry. Russell’s adoption of the initials “AE”, meaning Aeon, signalled his pronounced tendency towards mysticism. At art school, while he did not draw from the model, he nonetheless had a good knowledge of anatomy, and so his paintings, no matter how fanciful, are convincing. Russell was a truly visionary artist, and his paintings depict phantasms ‘waking dreams’, and visions that appeared in his mind. However he was also a practical man, who remained solidly rooted to the ground, studying economics, finance, agriculture and social improvement. Having abandoned the Metropolitan School of Art course, Russell worked for a time at Pym’s department store, before taking up employment with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. He proved an efficient administrator, polemicist and fund-raiser, playing a leading role in establishing a nation-wide co-operative movement. He edited the IAOS’s periodicals, The Irish Homestead and The Irish Statesman. Alongside the practical articles he wrote for these publications, he also contributed to The Irish Theosophist, and, assisted by W. B. Yeats, decorated the headquarters of the Theosophical Society on Ely Place with large canvases depicting spirits and faeries in Irish landscapes. After 1920, when Ireland’s political landscape was being radically altered, Russell proved himself able to adapt to the new circumstances, combining in his writings and paintings elements of the modern world. His 1922 novel, The Interpreters, looks back to the 1916 Rising, and reveals his socialist and idealist worldview, while his 1933 novel The Avatars, is a futurist fantasy. After 1915 Russell discontinued exhibiting in Ireland, although his work continued to be shown in the United States up to the time of his death, in England, in 1935.

Peter Murray