Tony O'Malley HRHA (1913-2003)
Life in the Pond II
Oil on canvas, 183 x 122cm (72 x 48")
Signed in Irish, inscribed with title in Irish and English and dated "9/96". (AR 5966)

Exhibited:...

 

Tony O'Malley HRHA (1913-2003)
Life in the Pond II
Oil on canvas, 183 x 122cm (72 x 48")
Signed in Irish, inscribed with title in Irish and English and dated "9/96". (AR 5966)

Exhibited: "Tony O'Malley" Exhibtiion November/ December 2005, where purchased by present owner.

Literature: "Tony O'Malley" (2005) full page illustration

Tony OMalley (1913 -2003) returned to Ireland from Cornwall, to live in a restored cottage near his birthplace in Callan, Co. Kilkenny in 1990. He was then 77 years old and had lived with the kind of bad health that suggested even greater age. The house, in a ruinous state when they acquired it was brilliantly restored by the OMalleys but it is the garden, an artwork in itself created by Tonys wife, Jane, also an artist - that steals the attention of visitors. One of its striking features is the presence of, not one but two water features, one an architecturally classical, moat-like pool frames one side of the house and reflects light back into it. The other, out of immediate view from the house, at the other end of the garden, next to their shared studio space, was a pond of a different kind - wild, bursting with vegetation, filled with fish and a haven for thirsty birds. The studio pool was a constant source of inspiration for OMalley, so much so that Jane recalls that following a bout of bronchial pneumonia and treatment in the intensive care unit of the local hospital, he headed straight to his easel, where he immediately began a picture of the pond.

The painting for consideration here, Life in the Pond II, dated September, 1996, has to be seen in this context. It explodes with life and vitality, one might even say defiance at OMalleys own physical frailties (only one lung following TB as a young man, survivor of a serious heart attack in his forties, almost totally blind in one eye and diminished sight in the other and with ongoing circulation and bronchial problems). Yet this painting is among the most joyful and exultant celebrations of nature, colour, and movement in Irish art. Despite his own fragile hold on life, he is impassioned by the darting and flowing movements of the fish, the birds and grasses represented by dazzling touches of colour and feathery, delicate brush marks and the sparkling turbulence of the water. OMalley was one of the great colourists in Irish art. He first became intoxicated with colour when he visited the Scilly isles and the Bahamas in the 1970s and 80s, but his use of colour following those trips is compartmentalised by comparison to the fluidity and openness of the composition in Life in the Pond II. While he clearly exercises control over the movement from top to bottom, there is an ease and joyfulness about this picture that marks it out as a particularly important painting from this period. It is not the painting of an old man, although the image is perhaps more directed by memories of a habitat that he loves than anything his failing sight could have capture. Clearly his wifes decision to provide him with a pond beside the studio was an inspired one.

Catherine Marshall
August 2016

 

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