Melanie le Brocquy was born in Dublin in 1919 and studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the École des Beaux-Arts, Geneva and the Royal Hibernian Academy School of Art, Dublin from 1937 to 1942. Scale is of central importance to Melanie le Brocquy’s work. She works on a small scale, predominantly in clay in plaster that is later cast in bronze and carefully patinated. Despite their often diminutive size, her sculptures are virtuoso observations of gesture; naturalistic, unposed studies of the body that are imbued with a tenderness and humour as well as a canny exactitude. Working without preliminary drawings, le Brocquy’s sculptures depict ordinary people in everyday situations, and, as poet Pádraic Fallon has observed, the life that she instills in her figures mean that they often appear as full-scale people and objects viewed as though far away rather than in miniature.
Melanie le Brocquy represented Ireland at the Salzburg Biennale in 1962 and won two Taylor Scholarships in 1938 and 1939, the California Gold Medal 1939 and the Claremorris Open Exhibition Prize in 1991. She is a member of Aosdána and an Honourary member of the RHA. She was awarded a prize for the best bronze casting at the RHA Annual Exhibition in 1995 and the RHA held a major retrospective of her work in 1999. She was a regular contributor to the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and the Oireachtas Art Exhibition and has also shown in Austin Desmond Fine Arts, London; and the Bell Gallery, Belfast. Her work has been acquired for the public collections of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the American College and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in Dublin, as well as Magdalene College, Oxford, the Irish Embassy in Washington DC, AIB, Aer Rianta and many private collections in Ireland, England and North America.
Exhibitions with Taylor Galleries:1991
1986 Melanie le Brocquy: Retrospective
1976 with Patrick Heron (Dawson Gallery)
1973 with William Scott (Dawson Gallery)