SIR GERALD FESTUS KELLY PRA (1879-1972)

Mah-Aung-Saw-Myan (1924 to 1929 Burma - Myanmar)

Item Stock Code

02131

Item Medium Description

Oil on canvas in the original painted and gilded carved wood frame

Item Signed, Inscribed, Dated Details

Signed Kelly; signed, inscribed with title and exhibition venues, numbered B.f.51. and dated 1924 & 1929 on the reverse

European Dimensions

96.50 cm wide 165.00 cm high

UK/USA Converted Dimensions

37.99 inches wide 64.96 inches high

Item Framed/External Dimensions

125.50cm framed width 195.00cm framed height

Converted Framed/External Dimensions

49.41 inches framed width 76.77 inches framed height

Item Provenance & History

Mrs. Charles Furst, Freeport, Illinois; purchased from the Carnegie Institute travelling exhibition, 1930; to 2007

Item Literature

Carnegie Institute International Exhibition Catalogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1930, number, 154, illustrated plate 143
Derek Hudson, For Love of Painting. The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, K.C.V.O., P.R.A., London 1975, page 31

Item Exhibition History

London, Royal Academy, 1929, number 115
Liverpool, 57th Annual Autumn Exhibition, 1929
Brussels, Irish Art Exhibition, May 1930
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute International Exhibition, 1930, number, 154; travelling to:
Cleveland and Chicago

Item Description / Dealer Expertise

Gerard Kelly's first trip to Burma in 1908 was supposed to be a remedy for an unhappy love affair . With a financial support of his friend Somerset Maugham, Kelly stayed in the city of Mandalay until the early months of 1909 painting landscapes and studies of Burmese dancers. After returning to London he continued working on this series, as it become extremely popular with the public .

His Burmese dancers have a strange impenetrability, their gestures are enigmatic and yet significant, they are charming, and yet there is something curiously hieratic in their manner; with a sure instinct, and with a more definite feeling for decoration than is possible in a portrait Mr Kelly has given us the character of the East as we of our generation see it? (Somerset Maugham, 'A Student of Character', International Studio, December 1914).

Kelly returned to Burma many times throughout his career to undertake further studies of oriental dancers. However, there can be no doubt that Mah-Aung-Saw-Myan is the masterpiece of this series of paintings, both from it’s subject and composition, its size and the very expensive carved frame that the artist ordered. In the year of its completion he showed the work in four major international exhibition, when it was sold to a private American collector.

SIR KELLY

Type	Artist/Maker
Qualificiations	PRA
Country of origin	England
Born	1879
Died	1972

As a young man in 1901, Gerald Kelly was sent to France to study painting by his father, the Vicar of Camberwell. The portraits he painted during his first few years in Paris have come to mark the beginning of his lifelong passion for art, and represent some of his most compelling and sensitive images. In a television interview in 1956, Gerald Kelly openly described his experiences as a twenty-two year old:

When I got to Paris, something went ‘bang’ inside me, and I, who had never gone to lectures or ever worked, had been utterly lazy, started to paint. I painted as long as the light lasted and, by and large, I have done that ever since.

Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century was still the Paris of the Impressionists, where Kelly was introduced to the influential art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Kelly was overwhelmed by the wealth of paintings at both Ruel’s home and gallery, although his admiration for French painting never triumphed over his love for the works of Velázquez. Paul Durand-Ruel took the young artist to see Claude Monet at Giverny and introduced him to Rodin, whose advice and kindness he came to value greatly. When Rodin succeeded Whistler as President of the International Society in 1903, it was the young Gerald Kelly whom he asked to accompany him to London to take up the appointment.

Kenneth Clark described Gerald Kelly as ‘the most reliable portrait painter of his time,’ and Clive Bell thought him ‘about the best President of the Royal Academy since Sir Joshua Reynolds.’

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Status

FOR SALE

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SIR GERALD FESTUS KELLY PRA (1879-1972)

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