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13 Charles Brady HRHA (1926-1997) Artist’s Studiosigned upper centre left
oil on canvas
91.75 x 61cm (36 x 24in)
Provenance:
Private Collection
€3,000-4,000 (£2,608-3,478)
Charles Brady was born in New York in 1926 but spent most of his life in Ireland. In 1948 he entered the Art Students League of
New York and took a yearlong course. After art school he continued to paint, beginning to exhibit in the early 1950s. He had his first
solo exhibition in the Urban Gallery in 1955. The following year 1956 saw him travel by ferry to Ireland and it was here he began
painting the Irish countryside. He returned to New York in 1958 but in 1959 he moved back to Ireland and settled there for good.
Poverty forced him to paint on small pieces of cardboard and small pictures became typical; he began to value the intimacy, and
affordability, of small paintings. In the 1960s he began painting still lives of everyday objects such as envelopes and tickets and this
also became typical. These small, modest, compositions allowed him to refine a spare almost mystical style.