On the Road to Castlebar: Peat Gatherers

© The Estate of Frank McKelvey. All rights reserved. DACS 2024. Image credit: Queen's University Belfast

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McKelvey has used a characteristic compositional device in this landscape, namely a road winding across the canvas, uniting the middle distance to the foreground. The stacks of peat, strategically placed at regular intervals along the roadside, lead the eye towards the human element in the composition – the peat gatherers – and to the shadowy hills in the left background. Although impossible to accurately date, the picture was painted after the mid-1930s, when McKelvey had assumed his more fluent style. (He is known to have painted in Co. Mayo from the 1930s to the 1960s.) Whilst depicting a barren landscape, the painting is gentle and pastoral.

Queen's University Belfast

Belfast

Title

On the Road to Castlebar: Peat Gatherers

Medium

oil on prepared board

Measurements

H 30.2 x W 42.9 cm

Accession number

QUB 51

Acquisition method

transferred from Riddel Hall, 1981

Work type

Painting

Inscription description

Frank McKelvey

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Queen's University Belfast

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