A family photograph with Christy Brown.
The last remaining archive of material relating to the work of Christy Brown (1931-1981), the Irish writer and painter whose life inspired the Oscar winning film, My left Foot, was sold at Bonhams in London today for £37,500. It had been estimated at £30,000-40,000.
It was bought by the National Library of Ireland and the National Archive. The material purchased includes previously unseen sketches, paintings and unpublished poems as well as a large cache of correspondence and writings. At its core are his private letters, in particular, his life- long correspondence with Katriona Maguire who started visiting Christy in his adolescence and nurtured his love of writing and painting. The 43 letters – five written with his left foot before he was advised to stop doing this in order to develop more control over this other limbs – run from 1945-1976, five years before his death. They include his most personal thoughts and observations amounting in the words of Brown’s biographer, Georgina Hambleton, ‘almost to a spiritual diary’.
Christy Brown became an international celebrity with the publication of his best selling autobiography, My Left Foot, in 1954. His work gained new recognition when a film of the book was released in 1989. Daniel Day Lewis won the first of his three Academy Awards for Best Actor for his portrayal of the writer.