Irish Oil on Panel Painting "Fisherman Roundstone" Connemara Galway by George F Campbe

Description

An important Irish oil painting by George F Campbell (1917-1979), titled "Fishermen Roundstone", circa 1950.
The painting depicts two fishermen … more An important Irish oil painting by George F Campbell (1917-1979), titled "Fishermen Roundstone", circa 1950.
The painting depicts two fishermen on their boat with nets and crab pots at the Roundstone harbor Connemara, with a row of whitewashed cottages to the background, the painting is signed "Campbell" lower right. Condition is very good, the painting was professionally cleaned and conserved in 1983, by Lucas Conservation Laboratory. Housed in the original wooden frame.
An important painting by one of Ireland's most significant 20th century artists.
Provenance; acquired directly from the artist thence by family descent. A C.O.A will be provided with this work.

Biography
Irish artist George Campbell began painting during the blitz of Belfast while working in an aircraft factory. He painted in Connemara, London and most frequently, Spain, where he lived for twenty five years. A founder member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Campbell was a member of the RHA, and won, among other awards, the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in 1966 and the Oireachtas Prize for Landscape in 1969. Campbell’s paintings are represented in Irish public and private collections.
Campbell was born in Arklow, County Wicklow, the son of the respected artist Gretta Bowen (1880-1981) & Matthew Campbell (1866-1925). He attended boarding school in Dublin (Masonic Orphan Boys’ School at Clonskeagh) before moving to Belfast to live with his widowed mother and family.
Campbell was working in an aircraft factory at the time of the Belfast Blitz, and began to paint, taking the bomb-damage as his subject. He was one of the founders of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. In the same year along with his brother Arthur (1909-1994) he published a sixteen-page book entitled Ulster in Black and White, that included drawings from the two brothers and their close contemporaries Maurice Wilks and Patricia Webb. Owing to the success of the original publication the brothers then published Now in Ulster (1944), an anthology of short stories, essays and poetry by young Belfast writers.
Campbell held a joint exhibition at the William Mol Gallery, Belfast with his brother Arthur in 1944. In the same year he also showed with Gerard Dillon at the Portadown gallery of John Lamb. In 1946 he showed with the Victor Waddington Gallery in Dublin, where he was to return on a number of occasions. The Council for the Encouragement of Art and Music hosted a solo exhibition in 1949 where he was to show twice more, in 1952 and 1960. He won £500 at the first CEMA Open Painting Competition at the Ulster Museum in 1962. Campbell also showed in one-man exhibitions with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1966 and 1972.
After the war Campbell became increasingly interested in Spain. In 1946 he came to know Spaniards who had settled in Dublin, and when in London painted visiting Spanish dancers in their traditional costume. He first visited Spain in 1951, encouraged by his friendship with Gerard Dillon and "an interest in bohemian characters". Dillon helped Noreen Rice who he met in 1951. She regarded both Dillon and Campbell as her mentors for decades and her work was of a similar surrealistic and primitive style. In the 1960s Campbell made his home in Ranelagh, Dublin on Florence Terrace, Leeson Park Avenue.

Campbell lived in Spain for six months almost every year throughout much of the following twenty-five years.

Campbell made stained glass windows for Galway Cathedral. He also played flamenco guitar. A member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, he won the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in 1966 and the Oireachtas Prize for Landscape in 1969. The Spanish government made him a Knight Commander of Spain in 1978.

George Campbell died in Dublin in May 1979. He was survived by his wife Margaret, his Mother, and two brothers, Arthur and Stanley. After his death the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and An Chomhairle Ealáion joined with the Instituto Cervantes to initiate the George Campbell Memorial Travel Award. In May 2017, Arklow Municipal District Council unveiled two plaques at St. Patrick's Terrace, Arklow, marking George's birthplace and 100 years since his birth.

Campbell's work forms part of many important private and public art collections, including Queen's University, Belfast, Ulster Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Hugh Lane Gallery, The National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, and Municipal Museum of Antequera, Malaga.

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