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Lot 38
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) ADAM AND EVE IN THE GARDEN, 1951-1952 Aubusson Tapestry, Atelier Tabard Frères et Soeurs, France; (from an edition of 9) signed with initials and dated in the weave lower left; signed on weaver's label on reverse Collection of George and Maura McClelland Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Louis le Brocquy, Tapestries, exhibition catalogue, 2000 (illustrated); The Hunter Gatherer - The Collection of George and Maura McClelland, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2004, p.90 (illustrated) Few artists anywhere have had as much experience in tapestry design. Along with his well-known predecessor Jean Lurçat, Louis le Brocquy has proved to be a master of the medium and a landmark figure in the revitalisation of this art form. His experience began in 1948, when Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers invited a number of painters working in London to design a first tapestry. His association with the medium further developed in the 1950s, in his collaboration with the great firm Tabard Frères & Soeurs, founded in the 17th century in Aubusson, France. Later the artist's tapestries were woven in the same historic region by the Atelier René Duché, Meilleur Ouvrier de France. The early tapestry designs include Travellers (1948), Garlanded Goat (1949-50), Allegory (1950), and the Eden Series (1951-52); the latter series, includes Adam And Eve In The Garden. Later there was the Inverted Series (1948-99), the Tain Series (1969-00), the Cúchulainn Series (1973-1999) and the Garden Series (2000). Large-scale tapestry commissions include Brendan the Navigator (1963-64, UCD, Michael Smurfit School of Business, Dublin), The Hosting of the Táin (1969; Irish Museum of Modern Art), the Massing of the Armies (RTÉ, Dublin) and the monumental Triumph of Cúchulainn (National Gallery of Ireland, Millennium Wing). In 1951, Mrs. S.H. Stead-Ellis, whose art collection already included le Brocquy tapestries, commissioned three related tapestries, adaptable as screen, rug and firescreen, on the theme of the Garden of Eden - Adam and Eve in the Garden, Eden and Cherub. He treated the theme with archetypal imagery in a Classical, even traditional manner, the sun and the moon appearing respectively in the male and female spheres. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil appears as in traditional French Medieval tapestry with the birds and butterflies among its leaves, but he adds a Surrealist aspect with eyes as well as leaves (as befits a tree of knowledge) and fish swimming in its branches. Eden remains one of le Brocquy's most interesting works; the vibrant colourful design is based on a series of subdivisions of the classical Golden Section, yet the design bleeds off the tapestry in a most unclassical manner. The leaves of the Tree mingle with the tears of Adam and Eve while the fatal apple is discarded, bitten and segmented. The artist, in an interview with Harriet Cooke published in The Irish Times on May 1973, describes his involvement with tapestry as something he had "rather stumbled into by accident". But after that first commission from Edinburgh Weavers, the medium took on its own distinct fascination: "I always found it a kind of recreation, involving completely different problems, it is refreshing in the sense that one is exhausted in a different way. There is also another aspect of it which is very exciting to the painter, who has this struggle with the angle, and that is the same aspect which is so exciting, say, to the Japanese Satsuma potter, when he puts his jar in the oven and waits on tenterhooks for it to come out. It always comes out a little different from what he had imagined and sometimes he has wonderful surprises. The method I use is a system of notation, a linear design which is numbered in the colours of a range of wools. Although one can visualise what one is doing, to a certain extent, when the tapestry is palpably there this causes an independent birth of something, and that is so contrary to the whole involved process of painting that it is rather refreshing." Dorothy Walker (1929-2002) Published on www.anne-madden.com 55 by 108.25in. (139.7 by 275cm)
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