Star Lot: An original oil on canvas board painting by the Ir...

Estimate

€400 - €800

Star Lot: An original oil on canvas board painting by the Irish artist John Skelton (b. 1925 - d. 2009). Light touches of green, blue and lilac paint capture the light and shade of this sunlit canalside scene. Signed bottom left and housed in a plain dark wood frame. Skelton has a good auction history with works selling at Adam's for mid to high hundreds.

Born in Co. Armagh in 1925 John Skelton studied at Queens University in Belfast, Belfast College of Art and St Martin’s School of Art, London. It was in London that he started his professional career and where he came under the influence of the Euston Road School in the late 1940s. He moved to Dublin in 1950 and worked initially in advertising as Art Director and illustrator of books, most of them educational. After 1975 he worked full-time as a painter. He had numerous one man shows in Dublin; two in Belfast, one in Los Angeles and one in the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut.Up to the late 1980s, he was a frequent exhibitor in group shows, particularly the annual Royal Hibernian Academy and the Watercolour Society shows in Dublin. In later years however, his work was in such demand that he contributed to these less often. During the 1970s and early 1980s he earned a reputation as a gifted teacher and lecturer in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.