Louis le Brocquy, H.R.H.A.

Gimpel Fils, London

The sheet is sound and has been laid down. There is a tiny speck of foxing in the upper left corner. The sheet has discoloured slightly but there are strong colours throughout. The work is in generally good overall condition. Held under glass in gilt wood frame with a clean cream mount. Please telephone the department on 0207 293 5575 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Across le Brocquy's long and fruitful career, his series focussing on the enigmatic Travellers which he first came across in the 1940s are among his most compelling works. It was while travelling about the countryside near Tullamore that le Brocquy recalls his first encounter with the Travellers, which was to prompt a theme that dominated his work over the next few years: 'I came across a group of 'tinkers' - as they were called then. They were still tinsmiths - that was their trade, mending kettles and saucepans...in those days, they had their picturesque caravans and went forth into the countryside looking for suitable stops'. Le Brocquy was 'struck by this other way of life' and spent time observing them, conscious not to be confrontational: 'I learned almost immediately that I should not try to become intimate with them - not to try to become one of them, as it were. I found that I got on best with them with what you might describe as mutual curiosity'.

Before beginning his paintings of the Travellers, le Brocquy made rapid sketches noting forms and groupings, facial expressions and body language and observing habits and rituals, interpreting them in an imaginative lyrical way. The present work is one such sketch and relates directly to the painting Travellers Making Twig Sign, 1946 (Sold in these room, 18^th May 2001, lot 233), which fills out and intensifies with heavier colour and texture the suggestions of the sketch. The sketches remain consummate, poetic works in themselves - their delicate lines and tender nature conveying an intimacy and vitality as engaging as the works in oil. The figure kneeling in the centre is fully absorbed in his almost sacerdotal task of holding two sticks which he crosses on the ground. Opposite, with billowing hair, kneels a woman also holding a stick, equally as involved with the ceremony and between the pair an eager boy observes. With a look of apprehension, two figures surround them. The whole image is one of serene beauty, intense and mysterious.

The sense of 'otherness' that the Travellers possessed was of relevance to le Brocquy. Having pursued an artistic career, le Brocquy had placed himself on the fringe of society. As a result, he felt: 'I was apt to regard [the Travellers] in a sense also as being analogous to the artist, to the artist's position in society - in those days especially. The artist...he or she was not taken seriously'. Le Brocquy related to their 'outsider' status, and had admiration for the difficulties they endured for their chosen path, which resonates in the sympathetic qualities of his Traveller works.

The Travellers' nomadic lifestyle was a polarising and ongoing topic of debate, evoking questions of primitivism, ritual, nationalism and modernism. Le Brocquy's adoption of a Modernist aesthetic was thus wholly appropriate, the fragmentary surface representative of the opinion they divided. Further still, being derivative from Cubism with its anarchical connotations, le Brocquy elucidates where his feelings lie.