Lot No: 96

Frank McKelvey RHA RUA (1895-1974)

FAIR DAY

Published Estimate: €50,000-70,000
Price Realised: €0

signed lower left; typed exhibition label on reverse
oil on canvas
36 by 48cm., 14 by 19in.
Bell Gallery, Belfast; Taylor Gallery, Belfast; Private collection
(?) RHA, Dublin, 1965, catalogue no. 17, as Fair Day, Creeslough, Co. Donegal (£75-0-0); ‘St Patrick’s Weekend Exhibition of Fine Irish Paintings’, Taylor Gallery, Belfast, 15-29 March 2003, catalogue no. 1 (illustrated on front cover of catalogue)

McKelvey painted a series of market or fair day scenes in the latter part of his career. During the 1930s he had painted the subject on rare occasions (for an example of such see plate 19, Market Scene circa 1935-36, in S. B. Kennedy, Frank McKelvey, RHA, RUA: A Painter in His Time, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993), but in the last fifteen years of his life exhibited seven market scenes at the RHA. Two of these depicted the fair day in Roundstone, Co. Galway; another was painted in Creeslough, Co. Donegal, and is quite possibly the present work.