CHATSWORTH FINE ART SALE April 29th, 30th & May 1st 2026

67 Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 734. Maurice MacGonigal, PPRHA, HRA, HRSA (1900-1979) “Connemara Coastline,”O.O.B., with rocky field in foreground looking out at multiple cottages, with sea and mountains beyond, approx. 51cms x 76cms (20” x 30”), Signed lower left, cloth mount, painted frame. (1) €3000 - €4000 “Dick Cleere at Coonagh Airfield 1951,”O.O.C, dated Oct. 1951, approx. 35cms x 45cms (13½” x 17½”). (1)
A relatively early work in Ryan’s career, this painting depicts light aircraft on a grass airstrip at Coonagh, a village west of Limerick city (Coonagh is now home to the Limerick Flying Club). Dating from 1951, the painting demonstrates Ryan’s skill with handling modern subject matter within an academic painterly tradition. Dick Cleere is shown in the foreground, going through paperwork, while in the background, a man in a red jacket talks with the pilot of a Cessna 150. Beyond is another light aircraft, possibly a Morane-Saulnier 603, its cockpit canopy raised. Ryan’s brushstrokes are light, almost flickering, capturing the effect of sunlight on grass, clouds scudding across the sky, and investing even the solid metal structures of the aircraft with a sense of animation. Long horizontal shadows on the airstrip increase the sense of depth, while the foreground figures are placed as if on stage, against a painted backdrop. This placement of figures in a dramatic theatrical way was also employed by Sean Keating, who in many ways inspired Ryan’s career as an artist. With its emphasis on modern subject-matter treated within an academic tradition, this canvas echoes Sean Keating’s depictions, some twenty years earlier, of the hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha. Having grown up in Limerick, the city where Sean Keating had first studied art, Thomas Ryan began his training under the local artist Richard Butcher. He then enrolled in the National College of Art in Dublin, where his teachers included Keating and Maurice MacGonigal. Early paintings by him from the 1950’s, including the present work, are strong Realist canvases, often depicting modern subject matter. He chose scenes from everyday life, such as his mother in the kitchen, or a jazz musician playing in a night club, as well as more ambitious subjects. Aged 28, he painted a large historical work, The Departure of O’Neill out of Ireland. Another canvas depicted the interior of the GPO during the Easter Rising. In later years while he received many commissions for portraits of members of the clergy, judiciary and leading business figures, it was Ryan’s still-lifes of flowers, and atmospheric studies of interiors such as Marsh’s Library, that form perhaps his most telling legacy in Irish art. Peter Murray 2026 €2,500 - €3,500 733. Thomas Ryan PRHA (20th Century Irish)