Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Dominican with Cats VIII, 1950

Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Dominican with Cats VIII, 1950 titled and dated 'Dominican with Cats VIII/July 30.50' (upper right) pencil, gouache, pen and ink and ink on paper 36.5 x 22.5cm (14 3/8 x 8 13/16in). Footnotes: Exhibited London, Christopher Hull Gallery, Michael Ayrton and John Minton, 27 April-21 May 1984, no. 32 This composition may have been based on something Ayrton actually saw - he habitually carried a sketchbook and would draw anywhere, any time something caught his eye. However the identification of the monk as a Dominican is interesting - and initially unlikely, given that the order were generally known as the 'Black Friars', due to the black robes they habitually wore over their white tunics. The challenge of painting in shades of white is one which has challenged painters from Turner to Sargent, and is certainly one of the inspirations here, but if that were all, 'Carmelite' or 'Cistercian' with Cat would seem more obvious. And the choice was clearly deliberate, given the inscription on the drawing and the title of the finished painting. In fact there were various aspects of the Dominican order in particular which would have appealed to Ayrton, especially at that particular moment in his career. The Dominican order was associated with several thinkers and writers who had always interested him, including Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, but, most importantly, included the painter Fra Angelico, whom Ayrton ranked with Piero della Francesca and Masaccio among the Early Renaissance artists whose 'monumental figures [with their] complex geometry...secret communication and unspecified drama' transformed his understanding of painting and his ambitions for his own work. This figure of the priest in communion with his cat is one of the early examples of his own experiments along those lines, shortly followed by the enigmatic Roman Window (1950, Museum & Art Swindon) completed a little later that year. The cat itself represents not only a link between the earlier, so-called Neo-Romantic paintings of the 1940s, and this new departure, but also by way of being a personal emblem; in life Ayrton was a keen 'cat-person' who always had at least one and usually more cats living with him. And at a completely different level, the fact that the Dominican sitting so peacefully with his cat belonged to an order nicknamed 'domine cane' (hounds of god) for their keen and often brutal pursuit of heresy in all its forms is exactly the sort of irony through historical trivia in which Ayrton always delighted. We are grateful to Justine Hopkins for compiling this catalogue entry. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing