Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART November 16th 2022

50 IMPERFECTIONS NOT STATED Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 187. Henry O’Neill (1798 - 1880) ‘View of St. Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare, prior to its restoration c. 1835,’ watercolour on paper, Signed (bottom lower left), in contemporary gilt frame, 26cms x 36cms (10½” x 14”). Depicting the Cathedral of St. Brigid in Kildare, this watercolour by Henry O’Neill, painted around 1835, is a valuable record of the building prior to its restoration four decades later. Not far from the cathedral stands the round tower, and beside the tower a broken high cross – all elements of this medieval Christian site that survive today. By the time O’Neill depicted the cathedral, the building was roofless and essentially a ruin. In 1875, under the supervision of architect George Edmund Street, restoration work began. The work included a new roof, north transept, chancel and west wall. The square tower at the crossing of nave and aisles was also rebuilt. O’Neill’s watercolour shows the cathedral as it appeared prior to 1875, with its roofless nave and south transept. The viewpoint is from the south, and shows the south wall of the nave with six lancet windows. During Street’s restoration, these windows were recessed within new Gothic arches, built to link and reinforce the wall buttresses visible in the watercolour. There is no sign of the west gable in his view, although it does appear in a late eighteenth-century watercolour in the Beranger Collection in UCD, where it can be seen to be in an advanced state of collapse. In George Petrie’s view of Kildare Cathedral, published in 1820 in Thomas Cromwell’s Excursions in Ireland, the gable wall has completely collapsed. Like Petrie, O’Neill produced illustrations for William Frederick Wakeman’s 1835 guidebook Picturesque sketches of . . scenery of Ireland, and also for his Fourteen Views of the County of Wicklow, published that same year. As well as being an artist, O’Neill was a teacher; his manual for art students was published by George Rowney in 1846. He was also an antiquarian, and in 1857 published his most important work, illustrating the ancient high crosses of Ireland. A controversialist, his 1863 his Fine Arts of Ancient Ireland, illustrated by G. Hanlon, set out to refute conclusions reached by Petrie in the latter’s Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland. While Petrie established, after careful scientific study, that the round towers of Ireland were built during the Christian era, many antiquarians, including Henry O’Brien, Charles Vallencey and O’Neill, preferred to believe they were older buildings, built for fire worship or as Zoroastrian temples. * Dr. Peter Murray, 2022. €700 - €1000 186. Henry O’Neill (1798-1880) ‘The Hill of Faughart, Co. Louth,’ O.O.C., c. 1871, Signed and inscribed lower left, 51cms x 59cms (20” x 23”). In this dramatic landscape, O’Neill captures the prospect from a location close to Moyry Pass—the ‘Gap of the North’—a few miles north of Dundalk. The view is taken from a craggy mountain, looking south towards the coastline and Dundalk Bay. In the middle distance can be seen the Hill of Faughart, famed for its ancient shrine devoted to St. Brigid. For centuries, Moyry Pass has been an important strategic location on the road between Dundalk and County Armagh. In 1600 Lord Mountjoy launched an attack here, on the forces of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, while ninety years later, William of Orange marched his army south through the Pass. An earlier Earl of Tyrone had been involved in the 1316 Battle of Faughart. Although the birthplace of Henry O’Neill is given by Strickland as Clonmel, other accounts propose that he may have been born in Dundalk: this painting may provide evidence towards the latter theory. Perhaps inspired by the bravery shown by his namesake who defended Moyry Pass against the English in 1600, Henry O’Neill has used both colour and aerial perspective to add drama and a sense of depth to this view, with rocks and cliff in the foreground depicted in browns and russets, while the Hill of Faughart is picked out in light green colours, and a thin silver line in the distance indicates the sea. Dark clouds hang over the scene, adding to the sense of Romanticism. This painting may be the work entitled The Battlefield of Faughart, North Side of Dundalk, or else A Mountain Cliff on the North Side of Faughart, both exhibited at the RHA in 1871, while O’Neill was living at Francis Street, Dundalk. * Dr. Peter Murray, 2022. €1000 - €1500