Le Brocquy, Louis (1916– )

Irish painter, resident in the south of France. Le Brocquy is best known for his paintings of the faces of writers such as W B Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce, evoking the presence rather than the physical likeness of the subject.

Born in Dublin, Le Brocquy travelled in Europe between 1938 and 1940. Formative influences included Rembrandt, Velázquez, Goya, and Manet, while the influence of Picasso is evident in his angular approach to form. He settled in London in 1946 where his circle included Francis Bacon and William Scott. There he emerged as a designer of tapestries and as a graphic artist, later illustrating Thomas Kinsella's translation of the Táin-Bo-Cuailgne (1969). In the mid-1960s Le Brocquy began to produce ethereal images of the human face inspired by Irish Celtic and early Christian art. His ongoing concern with the isolation of the individual lies behind his series of paintings made in the early 1970s in response to violence in Northern Ireland.