WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 4 MARCH 2019 AT 6PM

9 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) A KERRY BOG, 1934-1935 oil on canvas signed lower left; titled on label on reverse; also with number [9] on reverse 16 by 18in. (40.6 by 45.7cm) Provenance: Combridge Gallery, Dublin; Private collection; Whyte’s 29 February 2016, lot 20; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Recent Paintings of Kerry & Connemara by Paul Henry, R.H.A.’, Combridge Gallery, Dublin, from 7 May 1935, catalogue no. 35 Paul Henry first visited County Kerry, staying at Glenbeigh, in late 1932 or early 1933. The visit marked a watershed in his life, for throughout the previous decade his domestic affairs had deteriorated to culminate eventually in the break up of his marriage to his first wife, Grace, in 1929. Thus when he returned to Glenbeigh his mood was lighter, as was his palette, as the Irish Press (7 May 1935) perceptively noted both in terms of tone and colour. Henry was enchanted with the Kerry landscape. ‘It is lovely. Wherever one turns there is material for dozens of pictures … I felt that if I spent a lifetime … I would never exhaust all the possible subjects,’ he told James Healy, a friend in New York. (1)The first fruits of that visit were shown at Combridge’s Gallery in the Spring of 1935. A Kerry Bog was possibly one of the earliest pictures inspired by the trip - others include The Road to Coomasaharnn, 1934-5 (Queen’s University, Belfast) and In the Kingdom of Kerry, 1935-1937 (private collection) - the artist’s mood being revealed in the clouds which are heavyish, although the brightness of the bogland itself belies the ominous quality in the clouds. The subject matter, however, is typically ‘Henry’, as is the manner in which the eye is led into the composition, eventually reaching the distant mountains.A Kerry Bog is numbered 1300 in S. B. Kennedy’s ongoing cataloguing of Paul Henry’s oeuvre. Dr S.B. Kennedy Footnote: Henry to James Healy, letter of 13 December 1934 (James Healy Papers, James A. Healy Collection of Modern Irish Literature, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries). €60000-€80000 (£52,630-£70,180 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 9