Watercolor "sad Head Ii" By Leslie Macweeney

Watercolor, ink wash, signed lower right Mac Weeney, titled on the back "Sad Head II". Under canvas mat, under glass, in a box frame golden baguettes. Provenance: The Dawson Gallery, 4 Dawson Street Dublin. Dimensions at sight 19x27 cm. Overall dimensions, with frame, 38x30 cm.

Born in Dublin, Leslie MacWeeney studied at the National College of Art under Seán Keating and Maurice MacGonigal (q.v.). She was awarded a scholarship to the École des Beaux Arts, Paris, where she studied under Professor Souverbis. MacWeeney has been included in many group shows, making her debut at the RHA in 1957, and participating in (and helping to organise) the IELA (1954-1963), the Oireachtas (1955, 1962) and the WCSI (1963). Each time her address was given as Kilteragh Lodge, Foxrock, Co. Dublin. She was also included in the 1959 and 1961 Paris Biennales, and more recently in the Irish Women Artists exhibition, organised jointly by the National Gallery of Ireland and the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1987. In the catalogue to this latter exhibition, Dorothy Walker gave high praise to MacWeeney's wall hangings of the Stations of the Cross, which now hang in the Corpus Christi Church, Knockanure, Co. Kerry. Walker deemed this series to be "one of the most important works of religious art in the sixties" and found in them "no false note, nothing maudlin, nothing trite, but a powerful emotional content" (pp.56-57). MacWeeney has also had solo shows at the Clog Gallery, Dublin (1957), and the Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles (1961), and several shows at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin. Her work is in the collections of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, TCD, the Thomas Haverty Trust, and the Santa Barbra Museum of Art, California.