There is an interesting story behind Cork Bowler, an oil on panel by Gabriel Hayes at Sotheby’s Irish Sale in London on November 19. In a painting dating to c1941 a road bowler is poised, ready to release his steel ball. Beside him another man stares with considerable concentration down the road.The setting is Lough Gur, Co. Limerick where the artists’ husband Sean P. O’Riordain, an archaeologist and lecturer at UCC, was excavating. The model for the bowler was the foreman of the excavation, Jock Kiely and the onlooker is Lar Gorey, a local farmer.This is a very rare glimpse indeed of the art of road bowling expressed as pictorial art. The artist and sculptor Gabriel Hayes (1909-1978) is best remembered for her sculptured panels on the Department of Industry on Kildare St. in Dublin. Remarkably for a woman in Ireland of that era she worked on these panels while suspended in a wooden cage 23 metres above ground level on the street. Hayes also designed the coins for the new decimal currency introduced in Ireland in 1971. She was taught by Sean Keating at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and his influence can be seen clearly in the realist tradition of this work. It is from the collection of Eddie Jordan and was previously owned by the Dwyer family of Monkstown, Cork. It is estimated at £30,000-50,000.Works at Sotheby’s Irish sale this year span the 19th century to the present day from paintings to sculpture. Many are appearing at auction for the first time. There is art by Yeats, Orpen, Paul Henry, Nathaniel Hone, Roderic O’Conor, Sir John Lavery and a wide variety of more contemporary artists and sculptors. Among these are Rowan Gillespie, F.E. MacWilliam, John Behan and Patrick O’Reilly. Estimates range from £500 to £500,000 for the top Yeats’ in sale, A A Paris of the West.
