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Hughie O'Donoghue RA (b.1953) Head (1986) charcoal on paper signed lower right and dated '86 h:76.20  w:111 cm. Provenance: Fabian Carlsson Gallery, London; Private Collection Exhibited: Hughie O'Donoghue, 'Paintings and Drawings 1983-1986' Fabian Carlsson Gallery, London One of a series of charcoal drawings, in which O'Donoghue envisions a figure, or head, at a window. As these drawings progressed, the figure emerged, in an intuitive process that O'Donoghue has likened to 'reverse archaeology'. As with much of O'Donoghue's paintings and drawings, this drawing relates to his family background, and can be read as a memory of childhood, almost an ancestral portrait. Born in Manchester, to an Irish mother from Erris, Co. Mayo, and a father whose parents were from Ireland, O'Donoghue studied at Goldsmith's College in London. However, much of his appreciation of art came from visits with his father to Manchester City Art Gallery. In 1984 a residency at the National Gallery in London enabled him to study closely the work of Titian, Goya, Courbet and other artists. Throughout his childhood, O'Donoghue visited Ireland frequently, becoming familiar with its history, landscape and people. His mother's parents lived near Erris, and their life, and the lives of the people of Mayo, form recurring themes in his art. He also completed several series of works based on his father's experiences in the Second World War. Images of mortality and death are frequent in O'Donoghue's work, which is a mixture of figuration and abstraction, and often created within a quasi-religious context. A member of the Royal Academy since 2009, O'Donoghue has also been elected to Aosdána. has He has had solo museum exhibitions in Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Gemeentenmuseum in the Netherlands, the Imperial War Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Leeds City Art Gallery and The Irish Museum of Modern Art. Peter Murray, March 2023