Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) CHILD WITH DOLL, HOMMAGE À JANKEL ADLER, 1949 lithograph (from an edition of 20) inscribed on reverse with mounting instructions in the artist`s hand, unnumbered and not signed; probably an artist`s proof; the edition numbered twentu plus artist`s proofs 30½ by 20½in. (77.47 by 52.07cm) The original watercolour and carbon drawing, Child With Doll, sold at Whyte`s, 28 April 2008, as lot 53. Child With Doll was made in London in January 1949, at a crucial point in the development of Louis le Brocquy`s art. Created between his celebrated Traveller paintings and the Grey Period works, of which A Family, 1951 (National Gallery of Ireland), is the best-known example, Child with Doll includes elements of both series. In form, the ragged toddler who trots along while embracing a smiling doll is reminiscent of the Traveller children who hang on their mother`s skirts in paintings such as Tinkers Enter the City, 1947, and Tinkers Break Whitethorn, 1947. Yet in setting and theme Child with Doll presages many of the Grey Period works. Like A Family, Child in a Yard, 1953 (Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane), and several of the other paintings that le Brocquy exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1956, this image features a child whose humanity is contrasted with its stark surroundings. Dating from the post-war period when atomic catastrophe seemed a very real threat, these works combine the existential angst that dominated the work of le Brocquy`s friend, Francis Bacon, with a humanistic celebration of the innocence of youth. Writing in 1950, James White suggested that the toddler in Child with Doll was based on the figure of a girl hugging a doll in The Fair at Bray Head, 1949. White wrote that the child became ... charged with a meaning of its own as a symbol of the lost children of Europe, wandering through a cruel world with wonder and only half-understanding. When it was recreated as a separate work (Child with Doll), the doll remained with it, as a symbol of yet another future generation that these children carry with them. In short, the child with doll is a parable of recurrent life, springing up through the ruins as fireweed grows on the rubble of a bombed house"".1 Le Brocquy has recalled how he heard of the horrors of the Holocaust first hand from his friend, the French-Jewish art dealer Charles Gimpel. Both the Traveller series and the stark interiors of the Grey Period works have been related to the multitudes of refugees displaced during World War II and its aftermath. 2 The connections between Child with Doll and the horrors of war are strengthened by an inscription on the verso of the original work which reads Homage À Jankel Adler. Born in 1895 into an Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, Adler made his home in Germany until the rise of National Socialism forced him to flee, firstly to France, and then to London. Adler, whom le Brocquy met in London in 1947, soon became both a friend and an inspiration to the young Irish artist. Throughout his long and fruitful career, Louis le Brocquy often acknowledged his artistic influences by creating hommages to their work. While his last shows in Dublin and London included hommages to Velazquez, Goya, Manet and Cezanne, Child with Doll is both one of his earliest hommages and a transitional work that lies at an important crossroads between the Irish orbit of the Travellers and the international arena of the Grey Period.Dr Riann Coulter 1 James White, `Contemporary Irish Artists (VI): Louis le Brocquy`, Envoy, vol. 2, no. 6, Dublin, May 6, 1950, p. 59. 2 See for example Yvonne Scott, Louis le Brocquy Allegory and Legend, exhib. cat. Hunt Museum, Limerick, 2006, p. 24.
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