Child in a Yard

Artist Louis le Brocquy (1916 - 2012)

Date1953

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions132.1 x 96.5 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Mr and Mrs Bomford, 1967. © The Estate of Louis le Brocquy.

Object number1263

Description'Child in a Yard' was painted at the end of what has come to be termed le Brocquy's 'grey period'. This body of work began with horizontally composed depictions of families in interiors. The most striking aspect of these family scenes is the isolation from each other of the individual members of the family despite the occasional inclusion of children and symbols of domesticity like cats and dogs. In 'Child in a Yard', painted towards the end of the 'grey period', the composition is vertical and the isolation of the individual is complete. Like many of le Brocquy's work s of this time it does not simply record or depict a person and a place but symbolises some much more fundamental aspect of the human condition. Unlike the adult figures who appear so despondent in the family pictures, his children as in 'Child in a Yard' have a more hopeful air, unblemished as yet by experience. The walking figure of the child is painted in an almost pure white pigment which contrasts unnervingly with the dark of the grim surroundings to create a mysterious sense of good and evil, darkness and light, innocence and experience.

(Catalogue Entry [57]: A Century of Irish Painting - Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1997, p. 160)

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