Important Irish Art 30 November 2015

Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)

CONNEMARA, c.1929-1930

oil on board

signed lower left

10_ x 12_in. (26.04 x 31.12cm)

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner’s grand-aunt;Thence by descent

Possibly exhibited at ‘Recent Work by Paul Henry’, Combridge’s, Dublin, from 4 August, 1930; Possibly exhibited at ‘Dublin

Painters’ Society, Dublin, 1-13 February, 1932

Kennedy, S.B., Paul Henry: with a Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations, Yale University Press, New Haven and

London, 2007, possibly as catalogue no. 737 as Pool on the Bog

When Paul Henry first went to Achill Island in 1910 it was to be the central feature of his life. Achill ‘talked’ to him, he

later wrote, there ‘seemed no current strong enough to carry me away’ (An Irish Portrait, London, Batsford, 1951, p. 5).

To begin with, the local people and their way of life most interested him, but from around 1914-15 he concentrated on

the landscape itself. Henry’s treatment of the landscape has a certain monumentality inspiring a sense of timelessness.

In it we have the beginnings of a sense of Realism which was new to Irish painting: gone is the Romanticism of much

late-nineteenth-century Irish art, to be replaced by a Post-Impressionist-inspired simplicity of concept which stems from

Henry’s Parisian training.The brisk handling of paint in the foreground of Connemara suggests that it must date from

about 1929-30. The setting resembles the high ground east of Leenane in County Galway, in which case the mountains

in the background belong to the range immediately to the south of Delphi, but of this one cannot be certain. The

distant mountains, however, which are only gently modelled with light falling on their right, are typical of Henry’s work

at this time, as is the sky in which the use of impasto is slight. All of this contrasts with the foreground, where heavier

impasto and more spontaneous brushwork have been employed and which increases the sense of recession between

the background and the foreground. Also, as can be seen in the foreground and in the sky, the artist has made good

use of the surface of the board and its texture as a base for the painting. The upward thrust of the dark turf stacks in the

foreground emphasise the mountains behind.Dr S.B. KennedyOctober 2015

€40000-€60000 (£28800-£43200 approx.)

IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 30 November 2015