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I
rish
& I
nternational
A
rt
A
uction
M
onday
25
th
A
pril
2016
at
6.00
pm
65
77
John Doherty (b.1949) Steadfast (2007) (Part of the War Horses of Old Court Series)signed, titled & dated 2007 on reverse
oil & acrylic on canvas
31 x 46cm (12 x 18in)
Provenance:
Fenton Gallery, Cork (label verso)
Private Collection
Exhibited:
Solomon Fine Arts, Dublin: Important Irish & British & Master’s Prints, Merrion Hotel: 14th - 16th November 2008
€6,000-8,000 (£4,687-6,250)
John Doherty was born in Kilkenny in 1949. He studied architecture at Bolton Street College of Technology, Dublin from 1968 to
1973 before moving to Sydney for five years where he decided to pursue a career as an artist. Although the subject matter of much
of Doherty’s work belongs to the forlorn and crumbling remains of an Ireland that, though familiar, has been consigned to history,
his realism is immediately attractive for its apparently benign normality. The abandoned corner shops and bars, the rusting petrol
pumps, rotting boats and disused oil drums seem harmless enough, but upon closer inspection they assume a dark humour. Doherty’s
images, coupled with the wry wit of their titles, point towards the human stories that exist behind the facades of places and things
inhabited and used countless times over the years. Rendered in an incredibly skilled acrylic photo-realism, his paintings make the
different country of the past seem both tangible and real. He has exhibited regularly in the Royal Hibernian Academy’s Annual
Exhibition and his work is represented in private collections in Ireland, Australia, America and Europe, and included in the public
collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Institute of Modern Art, Chicago; the Irish National Stud, AIB Dublin
and London; and Artbank, Sydney.