Three Painters: Basil Rákóczi, Kenneth Hall, Patrick Scott, with a Preface by Herbert Read. Introduction by Herbrand Ingouville-Williams. Dublin: Three Candles Press, 1944. Black paper boards, lettered in white, in publisher’s dust jacket. A very good copy.

With a coloured frontispiece and eighteen tipped-in plates (six by each artist).

This was Patrick Scott’s first publication and is very scarce. The painters were members of The White Stag Group – a coterie of foreign and native artists (including Patrick Scott, Kenneth Hall and Basil Rakozci). Their ambition and attitude provided a much-needed focus for the isolated cosmopolitan desperate to escape the inertia of war-bound Dublin.

Their avant-garde ethos provided a vital counterpoint to the cultural stagnation of neutral Ireland, offering a connection to the disrupted currents of European modernism.