You can’t really compare MacGonigal to Yeats, whose mystical transcendence sets him in a class of his own, but there’s a lot of overlap. “MacGonigal was a very fine artist and his early work is up there with the best of them,” auctioneer Ian Whyte says. “He’s a little bit neglected, but when we get a really good one, the collectors come out of the woodwork. When MacGonigal was painting, cattle marts and milk churns were common currency. “My father once said to me that he was very happy to be a painter of village things,” says Ciarán MacGonigal, art historian and son of Maurice.

Source: Irish Independent February 12, 2021 02:37 UTC