CHATSWORTH SUMMER FINE ART SALE May 28th & 29th 2024

106 IMPERFECTIONS NOT STATED Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 “Bandstand, The Hollow, Phoenix Park, 1926”O.O.B., approx. 30cms x 40cms (12” x 15½”), Signed t.l. ‘Kernoff’. (1) Inscribed on verso: ‘The Hollow, Phoenix Park, Irish Free State Band, 1926; name H. A. Kernoff 13 Stamer St’ Bears Beverly Smith label on verso ‘Mr. Teevan, 3 Eglinton Rd.’ In this cheerful summer scene, set in ‘The Hollow’ in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, Harry Kernoff depicts an octagonal bandstand with a red roof, surrounded by an audience of onlookers who stand amidst the trees, listening to the music. In the left foreground, two women lean against a tree. Visible on the tree trunk is the shadow of a man; an enigmatic touch to this everyday scene. An inscription on the reverse of this painting states that the band playing was the ‘Irish Free State Band’. Perhaps the foremost visual chronicler of everyday life in Ireland in the twentieth century, like his English counterpart L. S. Lowry, Kernoff recorded the men, women and children of Dublin as they went about their daily routines, walking in parks, or by the canal, or heading out to the beach. However, unlike Lowry, Kernoff preferred to depict sunny days, with red-brick terraces, brightly coloured shopfronts and well- dressed people out and about, enjoying the sunshine. Paintings such as The Bandstand also reveal Kernoff’s sympathies with the working people of Dublin. He was a politically active artist, having joined the Radical Club and “Friends of Soviet Russia”. In 1930 he toured the USSR, and that same year several of his paintings were reproduced in the magazine Iskusstvo y massy, or “Art to the Masses”. In travelling to the Soviet Union, Kernoff was going back to his own family roots. Born into a Jewish family that fled pogroms in Belarus, Harry Kernoff’s father, Isaac Kernoff, set up as a cabinet maker in London. When Harry was fourteen years old, the family moved from Stepney to Dublin, where Isaac joined the cabinet-making firm of Louis Gurevich, on Capel Street. Settling in Stamer Street, while serving an apprenticeship with his father, Kernoff also attended evening classes at the Metropolitan School of Art, along with his brother Hyman. Over the years he showed frequently at the Dublin Painters gallery on Stephens Green, and also participated in group exhibitions, both in Ireland and abroad. From 1926 onwards, for almost five decades, he exhibited annually at the RHA, and he also had two solo shows with the Victor Waddington Galleries. Peter Murray 2024 Provenance: Collection of Thomas Teevan, Dublin. A distinguished lawyer and judge, Thomas Teevan served as Attorney General of Ireland in 1953-54. €5000 - €7000 889. Harry Kernoff (1900-1974)