Preston, Margaret Rose (1875-1963) A View of the Irish Coas...

Hammer

£36,000

Preston, Margaret Rose (1875-1963)
A View of the Irish Coast (1914)
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated, lower right:
M. R. Macpherson / 1914

Depicted here is Bonmahon, Ireland where Preston and her artist companion Gladys Reynell worked in the summer of 1914-15 (and at other times). There is a postcard of an almost identical scene as the painting depicting the road leading down to the beach between the cottages. Preston sent a copy of this postcard to Edith Collier (a New Zealand artist friend) in 1914. There is also an etching of Bonmahon by Preston (see https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/DA42.1964/).

Margaret Rose Preston was the pioneer of Australian 'national art' and the leading Australian modernist of the 20th century. She is highly regarded for her explorations, as a non-native artist, of Aboriginal motifs in her work. 

She lived with her close friend, Gladys Reynell, in London, Paris and Brittany between 1912 and 1914, where she was enjoying her new-found European celebrity as a painter of significant consequence. She married her husband, William Preston, in 1919.

Provenance:
Acquired by the grandmother of the current owner in the 1950s [the grandmother was a great collector of the works of female artists]

Property of a Lady of Title

Dimensions:
(Frame) 18.25 (H) x 21.25 in. (W)
(Canvas) 14.75 (H) x 17.5 in. (W)

We would like to acknowledge Roger Butler's contributions to the cataloguing of this painting.