Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 21st October 2019

102 72 Sean McSweeney HRHA (1935-2018) April Bogland (2001) signed lower left and dated ‘01 oil on board 30 x 40cm (11.75 x 15.75in) Provenance: Sandford Gallery, Dublin; €4,000-6,000 (£3,539-5,309) When Sean McSweeney moved with his family to rural Co Sligo, close to Lissadell, in 1984, he was returning to the landscape of his childhood. The schoolhouse he’d attended as a child became his studio, close to his home and adjacent to his own strip of bogland, tucked in behind a rocky shoreline and stretched under a vast sky. This elemental landscape became a constantly changing source of inspiration through the seasons. McSweeney was a close day-to-day observer of the landscape, and his paintings are distillations of a wealth of elements rather than strict representational descriptions. This beautiful painting, charged with the energy and optimism of spring, is the work of an artist at the height of his powers.