£2,900

inscribed with title on canvas edge
oil on canvas
36 x 30 1/2 in. (91.5 x 76 cm.).

The finished painting of Loretta, for which this is a study,  was exhibited at the 1931 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (112).  The composition remained basically the same, with a slight adjustment to the angle of the head and positioning of the hands.

Provenance: John Napper

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Titled on a label to the reverse, oil on panel, 6¼ x 5½ ins. (16 x 14 cms.)
Provenance: given by Kelly to his assistant, the artist John Napper

In 1901, Kelly moved from London to live in Paris where he took lessons from the Canadian Impressionist artist James Wilson Morrice, who advised him to paint out in the open, making small oil sketches as an exercise. This resulted in a series of scenes of everyday life in Paris, many of which were made near his studio in the Boulevard Montparnasse. This panel shows the Tour St. Jacques, with building work visible beyond in the rue de Rivoli, soon after the 1900 Exposition Universelle, which resulted in a surge of reconstruction throughout the centre of Paris.

We are grateful to Michael Barker for his assistance in cataloguing this painting.

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Signed and dated and inscribed on the reverse 'Mandalay 1919'; further inscribed by John Napper, 'Given to JN by GK', oil on panel, 13½ x 10ins. (35 x 25.5 cms.)
Provenance: given by Kelly to his assistant, the artist John Napper

Kelly's portraits of oriental dancers were at one time amongst the most popular of all popular prints. He first painted them early in his career, when he spent a period from 1908-9 in Mandalay, Burma, apparently to recover from an unhappy love affair. He returned to Burma and Cambodia later in his career to undertake further studies of oriental dancers.
He painted several poses of Ma Si Gyaw, this being pose II, the Tate Gallery holding pose IV (accession number NO3001).

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Inscribed with title on the canvas return (on all four sides); inscribed BL 44
Oil on canvas, squared in pencil, 25W X 31W ins. (64.5 X 79 cms.)
Provenance: The artist John Napper, Kelly's studio assistant

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Inscribed with title on the canvas return (on three sides)
Oil on canvas, squared in pencil, 24 X 29 ins. (61 X 73.6 cms.)
Provenance: The artist John Napper, Kelly's studio assistant

Kelly first visited Mandalay, Burma, between 1908 and 1909, to recover from an unhappy love affair. This was at the suggestion of (and partly funded by) his friend Somerset Maugham. Of Mandalay, Kelly wrote: 'Try and imagine how beautiful it was. A square mile surrounded by high, rosy brick walls and sunrise and sunset all over it.' (Derek Hudson, For Love of Painting: The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, 1975, p. 31). On arriving in Mandalay, Kelly set up his headquarters in the house of the District judge, and travelled up and down the Irrawaddy by steamer and rode inland by pony. Kelly made a good number of small plein air landscape sketches during his six month stay in Burma but larger landscapes on canvas (such as these) are rare. Their scale gives an added intensity to the shimmering colours. These two landscapes remained in Kelly's studio, the contents of which were left in Kelly's will to his assistant the painter John Napper. Of Kelly's working method Napper recalled: 'His slow painstaking methods made sure that there was always work in hand in the studio: portraits, landscapes, Burmese dancers, still-lives, started sometimes many years previously, would be got out, washed down, worked on, put away, and so on.' (Quoted Derek Hudson, p. 59).

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Inscribed with title on the canvas return (on three sides)
Oil on canvas, squared in pencil and chalk, 67 X 36 ins. (170.2 X 91.5 cms.)
Provenance: The artist John Napper, Kelly's studio assistant

'I had seen some snapshots of Burmese dancers, and so, with the sublime spontaneous stupidity of youth, I just went off to Burma. How lucky, how wonderfully lucky, I was.' (Sir Gerald Kelly, Exhibition of Burmese Paintings, 1962, Preface).

'Kelly worked continually in the last months of 1908 and early months of 1909, painting small landscapes and studies of Burmese girls, . but the Burmese picture most likely to be remembered is one of the dancer Ma Si Gyaw, begun at Mandalay in 1909 and presented by Francis Howard to the Tate in 1914.' (Derek Hudson, For Love of Painting, The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly, 1975, p. 32.) Kelly's paintings of Oriental dancers soon became familiar to the public through popular prints - at one time amongst the most popular reproductions in Britain. Maugham wrote enthusiastically of the paintings: '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 painted Ma Si Gyaw about thirty-six times. This painting remained in his studio until it was inherited by the painter John Napper, Kelly's studio assistant.

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Signed and dated on the reverse
Oil on panel, 8Q X 6E ins. (21.6 X 17.2 cms.)

From his early training in Paris (under Canadian Impressionist painter James Wilson Morrice), Kelly was encouraged to sketch frequently en plein air. For this purpose he used small prepared wooden panels and was especially skilled at allowing the natural colour of the wooden panel to add luminosity to the painting. The setting is likely to be French, possibly the Isle-de-France. A panel of comparable size is in the collection of theTate.

We are grateful to Michael Barker for his assistance.

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 Inscribed on canvas return: ‘Another Yein’
Oil on canvas, squared for transfer, 22 × 67 1/2 in. (56 × 171.5 cm.)
Provenance: John Napper

‘Kelly’s 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 (William Somerset Maugham,‘A Student of Character: Gerald Festus Kelly’, International Studio, December 1914).

This large study depicts a synchronised dance group, or Yein. The performance known as Nan Twin Ah Phyo Taw Yein (literally ‘synchronised dance group of young girls performing at the palace’) would typically have been presented to the British Governor or other high-ranking officials, and Kelly may well have seen such a performance whilst living at the house of the District Judge during his seminal six-month stay in Mandalay from 1908 to 1909. The elaborate headdresses signify that the girls are unmarried.

This remarkable study remained in the artist’s studio until the artist’s death in
1972, at which point they were inherited by the painter John Napper, Kelly’s studio assistant. The green horizontal silhouette visible at the top of the composition, which might be read as an outline of background hills, is in fact the remains of an earlier portrait (a full-length woman standing).

The 1957 Kelly exhibition held at the Royal Academy included a painting on
the same theme titled Yein Pwe: Pagan, which is recorded as having been
started in 1912 and thereafter worked upon on numerous occasions.

We are grateful to Robert Thornhill and Nanda Heinn for their assistance.

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Signed, titled, dated and inscribed on the reverse, ‘No. 64 at W’ Oil on panel, 8 1/2 × 6 3/4 in. (21.6 × 17.2 cm.)
Provenance: collection of Wilfred Tomlinson (stamped on the reverse); Sotheby’s, Sussex, 24 October 1989
Exhibited: Sir Gerald Kelly, Royal Academy, 1957 (no. 251)

Kelly’s visit to Burma, funded by Somerset Maugham, lasted from the end of 1908 to April 1909.

Pakokku is a stopping point for the Mandalay to Pagan ferries on the Irrawaddy River, about 15 miles north of Pagan. It is a tobacco-growing town with a busy market. In the upper left there is a buffalo-drawn cart and, on the lower right, figures under large umbrellas, all waiting for the ferry.

When shown in the 1957 Royal Academy exhibition of Kelly’s work, this panel was still owned by the artist.

We are grateful to Robert Thornhill for his assistance.