Lot 296 SEAN MCSWEENEY HRHA (1935 - 2018)
Title: Reclaimed Mountain Field (1980)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Signature: Signed Lower Right and Inscribed on Taylor Galleries Label Verso
Provenance: Taylor Galleries, Dublin (Label Verso);
Private Collection
Exhibited: Sean McSweeney Exhibition, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, June 1980, Catalogue
No. 7
Framed
Sean McSweeney (1935–2018) is recognised as one of the most significant Irish landscape painters of the twentieth century and was justifiably described in an obituary as a “radical painter who rendered the Irish landscape poeticallyâ€. (1) Born in Dublin, McSweeney lived for a time in Co. Wicklow before eventually moving to his mother’s birthplace in Co. Sligo in 1984, the year he was elected to Aosdána.
McSweeney was self-taught as an artist, preferring to learn by observation and experiment. Brought up by his mother following his father’s early death, he was exposed to art in various galleries and was attracted to the example provided by a host of artists including Nathaniel Hone, Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry, Nano Reid, Patrick Collins and Camille Souter in Ireland, but absorbing also the international innovations of Abstract Expressionism. (2) Following his initial employment as a clerk, McSweeney began painting full time and achieved his first solo show in 1965, at the Dawson Gallery. Before his move to Sligo, he lived for almost two decades in Co. Wicklow, and Reclaimed Mountain Field (1980) suggests the landscape he
encountered there.
Reclaimed Mountain Field demonstrates McSweeney’s particular approach to landscape representation. While the Co Wicklow terrain, characterised by mountains and forests, is significantly different from that of the more lateral and open bogland landscape of Co. Sligo, McSweeney’s capacity to embrace a combination of the tangible and the emotive remained a common feature throughout his life as an artist. This painting reflects his preference for the atmosphere and character of place over illusionistic detail.
The deep blue upper reaches of sky contrast effectively with the intense brightness at the horizon, before giving way to the browns and greens of the body of the landscape. Touches of colour – the rusty yellow, the chalky whites, the hints of blue – give life and texture to an otherwise brooding landscape; the tactile meets the abstract. Dark bands that can just be made out in the fading light suggest field boundaries, and while scale remains intriguingly ambiguous there is the sense of an unimpeded perspective over the terrain. Landscape was of crucial significance in the Irish cultural cannon, with a historical legacy that led inevitably to the nationalistic, politicised imagery that underpinned the work of many artists in the early decades of the twentieth century. During the course of the century however, artists developed an increasingly outward-looking perspective. McSweeney’s work reflects a combination of poetic sensitivity to the connection with the land but expressed through an increasingly international sensibility as Irish artists gained in confidence regarding their place in the world.
Dr. Yvonne Scott,
July 2026
Footnotes:
1. Irish Times, 23 June 2018
2. See Yvonne Scott, introductory essay for Seán McSweeney, Bogland and Shorelie Sligo, Taylor Galleries, October 2002, unpaginated
€4000 - 6000
Image: 67.5 x 88cm Framed: 99.5 x 120cm (approx.)
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