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54 Mainie Jellet (1897-1944) Composition (1928)signed lower right & dated 1928
gouache
28.5 x 42cm (11 x 16in)
Provenance:
James Adam’s, Dublin, 28th May 2014 Lot 65;
Private Collection
Literature:
Mainie Jellet & the Modern Movement in Ireland, Bruce Arnold, 1991, pages 114 and 115
show 11 studies in relation to this work and it’s composition.
€4,000-6,000 (£3,478-5,217)
Mainie Jellett was born in Dublin in 1897. She studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and
under Walter Sickert at the Westminster Technical Institute in London. Jellet showed precocious talent as
an artist in the impressionist style. She spent a time in Paris with her companion Evie Hone, working under
André Lhote and Albert Gleizes and it was here she encountered cubism and began an exploration of non-
representational art. After 1921 she and Evie Hone returned to Dublin. Her painting Decoration (1923) was
among the first abstract paintings shown in Ireland when it was exhibited at the Society of Dublin Painters
Group Show in 1923. Along with Evie Hone, Louis le Brocquy, Jack Hanlon and Norah McGuinness she
helped found the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. She died a year later, aged 47.