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The Leicester Galleries Ltd
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Medium
Oil on canvas in the original painted and gilded carved wood frame
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Signed/Inscribed/Dated
Signed Kelly; signed, inscribed with title and exhibition venues, numbered B.f.51. and dated 1924 & 1929 on the reverse
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Dimensions
96.50cm wide
165.00cm high
(37.99 inches wide 64.96 inches high)
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Framed Dimensions
125.50cm framed width
195.00cm framed height
(49.41 inches framed width 76.77 inches framed height)
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Provenance
Mrs. Charles Furst, Freeport, Illinois; purchased from the Carnegie Institute travelling exhibition, 1930; to 2007
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Literature:
Carnegie Institute International Exhibition Catalogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1930, number, 154, illustrated plate 143
Derek Hudson, For Love of Painting. The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, K.C.V.O., P.R.A., London 1975, page 31
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Exhibition History:
London, Royal Academy, 1929, number 115
Liverpool, 57th Annual Autumn Exhibition, 1929
Brussels, Irish Art Exhibition, May 1930
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute International Exhibition, 1930, number, 154; travelling to:
Cleveland and Chicago
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Description / Expertise
Gerard Kelly's first trip to Burma in 1908 was supposed to be a remedy for an unhappy love affair . With a financial support of his friend Somerset Maugham, Kelly stayed in the city of Mandalay until the early months of 1909 painting landscapes and studies of Burmese dancers. After returning to London he continued working on this series, as it become extremely popular with the public .
His Burmese dancers have a strange impenetrability, their gestures are enigmatic and yet significant, they are charming, and yet there is something curiously hieratic in their manner; with a sure instinct, and with a more definite feeling for decoration than is possible in a portrait Mr Kelly has given us the character of the East as we of our generation see it? (Somerset Maugham, 'A Student of Character', International Studio, December 1914).
Kelly returned to Burma many times throughout his career to undertake further studies of oriental dancers. However, there can be no doubt that Mah-Aung-Saw-Myan is the masterpiece of this series of paintings, both from it’s subject and composition, its size and the very expensive carved frame that the artist ordered. In the year of its completion he showed the work in four major international exhibition, when it was sold to a private American collector.
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