Portrait of a Scottish Officer Portrait of a Scottish Officer
Portrait of a Scottish Officer Portrait of a Scottish Officer
About Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932)
"Casimir grew up on the Dunin Markievicz family estates in Malopolska Province in modern day Ukraine. He studied law at the University in Kyiv but in 1895 transferred to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the Bohemian melee he met, married and lost a wife before meeting the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and political activist Connie Gore-Booth. They married and lived in Dublin from 1902, finding themselves in a literary circle literary circle that centred on W. B. Yeats and J.M. Synge. Despite founding a theatre company for Connie to perform his plays, he removed himself to Poland semi-permanently in 1913. His wife was a famous Irish revolutionary and nationalist who was elected Minister for Labour in the First Dáil, becoming the first female cabinet minister in Europe. In 1918 she became the first woman to be elected to the Westminster parliament but as she was held in Holloway Prison at the time and in accordance with party policy, she did not take her seat."

-Matthew Hall

Portrait of a Scottish Officer

£2,200

This rather haunted portrait of an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is likely to have been painted on a return visit from Poland. Signed and dated 1915, this man must have already experienced the senseless attrition of trench warfare. It is a small-scale canvas and although the sitter is in uniform it has an informality about it that suggests a window of opportunity grasped. Perhaps he is about to go back to the front and his wife, family or even the artist himself, needed a likeness captured, fearing the worst.

Reserved
About Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932)
"Casimir grew up on the Dunin Markievicz family estates in Malopolska Province in modern day Ukraine. He studied law at the University in Kyiv but in 1895 transferred to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the Bohemian melee he met, married and lost a wife before meeting the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and political activist Connie Gore-Booth. They married and lived in Dublin from 1902, finding themselves in a literary circle literary circle that centred on W. B. Yeats and J.M. Synge. Despite founding a theatre company for Connie to perform his plays, he removed himself to Poland semi-permanently in 1913. His wife was a famous Irish revolutionary and nationalist who was elected Minister for Labour in the First Dáil, becoming the first female cabinet minister in Europe. In 1918 she became the first woman to be elected to the Westminster parliament but as she was held in Holloway Prison at the time and in accordance with party policy, she did not take her seat."

-Matthew Hall