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Lot description
Colin Davidson (b.1968) Marketa Irglova (2011) oil on linen signed lower right, titled and dated 2011 verso h:127 w:117 cm. Provenance: Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin (label verso); Private Collection Exhibited: Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, 22nd March 2012 - 20th April 2012 - Transmission Exhibition Literature: Transmission Exhibition - Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, 22nd March 2012 - 20th April 2012 (illustrated page 27) Celebrated for his vivid, larger-than-life portraits, which are both quasi-photographic in their realism yet distinctly painterly in their gestural freedom, Colin Davidson has over the last decade built up an unrivalled portfolio of sitters, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel for Time Magazine's Person of the Year cover. He made several studies of the Czech musician Markéta Irglová. Musically gifted from an early age, she was a teenager when she first met Glen Hansard at a music festival organised by her father. Eventually they formed a band, The Swell Season and co-wrote the music for and starred in the film Once, winning an Oscar for Falling Slowly. They became romantically involved for two years but then went their separate ways (she is now married and lives in Iceland). Davidson was born in Belfast and, when he began his art studies, had no intention of being a portrait painter. His early work was based on expansive, aerial view of Belfast city. Then he moved closer to the street, making compositions based on the visual complexities created by the streetscape, shop window displays, glazing and multiple reflections, and the mixture of interior and exterior details. The musician Duke Special was a good friend and Davidson thought he would like to try a portrait. That painting was seen by Glen Hansard, who soon commissioned an album cover portrait from the artist. So striking were these initial portrait images that commissions and offers came thick and fast. Among those painted by him are Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Brad Pitt, even her Majesty The Queen. His Brad Pitt portrait (one of two) in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in the United States, where it was seen by Time Magazine editors. Hence the Merkel commission. He does not just paint the rich and famous. His Jerusalem series consists of 12 portraits illustrating the diversity of the city's history and population. While Silent Testimony featured 18 individuals whose lives have been touched by The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Aidan Dunne, March 2020