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Edward McGuire RHA (1932 - 1986) Dead Cat (1984) Oil on board, 60 x 90cm (23½ x 35½) Signed with initials and dated (19)'84 Also signed, inscribed and dated verso Provenance: From the Collection of Patrick MacEntee SC McGuire found this mummified feline in an old dairy on a farm in Co. Wicklow in 1980. There is a strong resemblance to the famous remains of Dublin’s Christchurch Cathedral cat who, in the 1850s, when chasing a rat, got caught in an organ pipe and being stuck, eventually died and became desiccated. The two animals were discovered when the organ was being restored and are now preserved, under glass, in the Crypt. In literature they appear as a simile in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake when someone is described as being “…. as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ ….”.