Martin Gale
RESCUED
Lot 8
Price Realised:
€19,000
Estimate:
€10,000 - €15,000
Martin Gale RHA, b.1949
RESCUED
Oil on canvas, 51" x 63" (129.5 x 160cm), signed; signed, inscribed and dated 2018 verso.
Provenance: Taylor Gallery, Dublin May/June 2018, No.2 (label verso); Private Collection, Dublin.
Living and wor...
Read more
Lot 8
Martin Gale
RESCUED
Lot 8
Martin Gale
RESCUED
Estimate:
€10,000 - €15,000
Martin Gale RHA, b.1949
RESCUED
Oil on canvas, 51" x 63" (129.5 x 160cm), signed; signed, inscribed and dated 2018 verso.
Provenance: Taylor Gallery, Dublin May/June 2018, No.2 (label verso); Private Collection, Dublin.
Living and working in Kildare, Martin Gale was born in Worcester, England in 1949 and studied at the National College of Art, Dublin. He has exhibited in Ireland, Europe and the USA and his paintings have been acquired by many important public, corporate and private collections. He has been elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy and, also, to Aosdna.
Gale often paints the familiar surroundings of Wicklow and Kildare but he imbues the ordinary with a sense of anticipation that charges the painting with tension. Rescued is cleverly composed, the diagonal direction of the jeep, leading your eye upwards, toward the snowy patch of field in the distance. Against this, notice the way the bands of light in the foreground move diagonally in the opposite direction. Gale manages to energise the horizonal bands of this rather flat landscape, while also using light to give the scene dramatic intensity.
His beautifully executed pictures build up a scene detail by detail. The nuances of the sky and weather, muddy roads, an old car, some sheds: all the specific things that particularise a place are recorded. But Gale is selective in the moment he chooses to paint. As in Rescued, we never know exactly why someone is in a picture, where theyre going, or why. This deliberate ambiguity contrasts with all that meticulously observed information to create a work imbued with expectancy.
Dr Frances Ruane. HRHA
November 2024
RESCUED
Oil on canvas, 51" x 63" (129.5 x 160cm), signed; signed, inscribed and dated 2018 verso.
Provenance: Taylor Gallery, Dublin May/June 2018, No.2 (label verso); Private Collection, Dublin.
Living and working in Kildare, Martin Gale was born in Worcester, England in 1949 and studied at the National College of Art, Dublin. He has exhibited in Ireland, Europe and the USA and his paintings have been acquired by many important public, corporate and private collections. He has been elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy and, also, to Aosdna.
Gale often paints the familiar surroundings of Wicklow and Kildare but he imbues the ordinary with a sense of anticipation that charges the painting with tension. Rescued is cleverly composed, the diagonal direction of the jeep, leading your eye upwards, toward the snowy patch of field in the distance. Against this, notice the way the bands of light in the foreground move diagonally in the opposite direction. Gale manages to energise the horizonal bands of this rather flat landscape, while also using light to give the scene dramatic intensity.
His beautifully executed pictures build up a scene detail by detail. The nuances of the sky and weather, muddy roads, an old car, some sheds: all the specific things that particularise a place are recorded. But Gale is selective in the moment he chooses to paint. As in Rescued, we never know exactly why someone is in a picture, where theyre going, or why. This deliberate ambiguity contrasts with all that meticulously observed information to create a work imbued with expectancy.
Dr Frances Ruane. HRHA
November 2024
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