SIR GERALD FESTUS KELLY P.R.A. (BRITISH 1879-1972) §
JANE XLVI
£6,000
Auction: 10 October 2018 at 11:00 BST
Description
Oil on canvas
100cm x 80.5cm (39.25in x 31.75in)
Footnote
Exhibited:
The Royal Academy of Arts, 1946, no.3
The Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Gerald Kelly Exhibition, 1957, no. 264
Living Artists Exhibition, Bradford, 1957
Note: Sir Gerald Festus Kelly was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall Cambridge before going on to study art in Paris and becoming one of Britain's most celebrated society portrait painters. Kelly had a dynamic international artistic career which started in Paris in 1901 when he met the influential art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel who introduced Kelly to prominent French artists like Degas, Monet and Rodin. After being spurned by a dancer, Kelly left Paris for Burma where he completed his acclaimed paintings of Burmese dancers before returning to England where he was commissioned to paint portraits of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, for which he received his knighthood.
The subject of Jane XLVI is however neither foreign nor royal but a much more personal subject for Kelly which he would return to again and again. The portrait depicts Lilian Ryan, an artist's model who met Kelly in 1916 and later went on to become his wife and lifelong muse. In a BBC interview Ryan recalls that upon hearing her first name Kelly exclaimed ''What a bloody name, I can't call you that I shall call you Jane''. Kelly subsequently painted 'Jane' no fewer than fifty times in multiple guises and submitted her portrait to the Royal Academy every year after 1920; an institution which Kelly himself would go on to become the President of in 1949.
This painting is one of the celebrated 'Jane' series and was first exhibited at the Royal Academy's 178th Summer Exhibition in 1946, then later again at the Royal Academy's Exhibition of Works by Sir Gerald Kelly in 1957. Kelly was said to relish the challenge of rendering contrasting materials with a high degree of finish and this picture exemplifies Kelly's abilitiy to use oil paint's illusionistic properties to render a variety of textures. Jane is depicted seated against a plain dark background which accentuates the opulence of her clothing and Kelly has suceeded capturing the subtle sheen of Jane's oriental silk robe decorated with floral motifs and the softness of her fur collar. Kelly acknowledged James McNeil Whistler as an early influence and Kelly's attention to decorative oriental materials echoes the elaborately detailed paintings by Whistler such as Princess From the Land of Porcelain (1863-64) that celebrated Japanese visual culture and was a major source of inspiration for the Aestheticism movement at the end of the nineteenth century.