Daniel O'Neill (1920-1974) Foster's Cottage Oil on board, 51 x 69cm (20 x 27'') Signed Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, label verso. Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1963, Cat No. 51 Daniel O'Neill left Ireland in 1958 to start a new life in London with his partner Maureen Boyce and to be near his dealer Victor Waddington. Waddington's new gallery centered on new trends in the International art world but he also continued to represent O'Neill through the Dawson Gallery in Dublin and his brother's gallery in Montreal where O'Neill's remained in popular demand. Settled in London, O'Neill experimented with acrylic paint and enjoyed local access to the Tate Gallery near his home. He also reunited with Belfast friends, Gerard Dillon and George Campbell. Between 1959-1960, The Tate Gallery held exhibitions, 'The New American', 'Picasso's retrospective' and the 'Blue Rider Group' founded by Wassily Kandinsky. Around this time Gerard Dillon invited O'Neill to visit the studio of Irish Abstract Expressionist painter, Peggy Archer(1926-1990) who lived in a coastal village in northeast Kent. The American Abstract movement had taken hold by this time causing painters to question European trends and in this atmosphere O'Neill probably reevaluated his work. In the early 1960's, O'Neill abandoned his surreal and formal images and moved to a style more in keeping with Expressionism until the late 1960's. Details on O'Neill's life in London remain elusive but we know he held two solo exhibitions in Ireland in 1960 and 1963 and about four exhibitions at Waddington's Galleries in Montreal. Although there are no recognisable landmarks in his paintings during this period, subjects at his exhibitions are associated with areas in Kerry, Cork and the Channel Islands. Several oils in O'Neill's exhibition in Dublin in 1963 suggest this cottage is most likely located in Kerry. O'Neill's partner, Maureen is reported to have had friends in Kerry and was eager to show O'Neill similarities between the Dingle Peninsula and North Donegal where he habitually returned to seek out inspiration for his work throughout his career. The couple are said to have taken a ferry over to Ireland for several weeks for their annual holidays and traveled around the rugged coastline skirting the Iveragh Peninsula while staying with friends. Although his style had changed at this time, O'Neill's paintings usually contained a personal dimension which could be powerful expressions of a past memory or an imagined fantasy. In Foster's Cottage, O'Neill centers on the dramatic effects taking place in a sky above a cottage in a muddy landscape. This is achieved by minimal colour and energetic brushstrokes to reveal a live surface. An isolated cottage emerges from flashes of blue and green pigment below the drama in the vast sky. The predominance of blue tones may be a nod to the Blue Rider group particularly the more mystical of the Expressionists, Kandinsky who favoured the colour or may symbolise Picasso's blue period pointing to O'Neill's psychological state at this time. While London initially offered exciting possibilities for the painter, being separated from Ireland had a progressively negative impact on his poetic sensibilities. Critics in Ireland and Montreal applauded O'Neill's new expressive style and colour. The critical acclaim translated into sales with one reporter from the Evening Herald stating that three paintings were purchased by the Arts Council. Last viewed at the RHA in May, 1963, Foster's Cottage has remained in the same collection for the last fifty seven years. Reviewing his solo exhibition at Waddington's galleries in Montreal, one critic who had reviewed his earlier exhibition at the Gallery in 1960 noted O'Neill's single or dual use of colour adding his work, 'presents a striking transition toward abstraction from subject matter on the part of this progressively thoughtful and gifted painter...and his works are even more profoundly poetic in content than before...' (The Gazette, Montreal 10 March, 1962 p.10). Karen Reihill, April 2021