WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 19 October 2020

32 Paul Henry’s autobiography – An Irish Portrait – was published by B.T. Batsford., London in March 1951 in an edition of 3,000 with a foreword by Seán Ó Faoláin and the present painting, A Sunny Day, Connemara, selected by the artist, to be reproduced on the dustjacket. In payment Paul Henry received a modest fee of £100 and an agreed 12½ % royalties on any future edition. Although he was disappointed with the financial return, writing the book had been ‘a great adventure’, he told his publishers. The book sold well and by October 1951 only 600 copies remained. In his foreword Ó Faoláin commented that what always delighted him with Paul’s work was the sure observation of nature. “Sometimes” he said, “people say that he is always painting the same thing – clouds, blue mountains and black bogs. He is always, indeed, painting the same thing; always the one thing – light caught in a flux, a moment’s dazzling miracle. His pictures are amazingly mobile with this miracle of light. He is the least static painter I know. He never repeats himself. I am not fitted to speak of the technical skill that presents thesesubtle observations, but I feel that it must be immense. He is really an impressionist au fond.” He continued: “The influence of Whistler is apparent. He acknowledges it generously in these pages [An Irish Portrait]. But the term misleads if it implies some sort of facile recording, or makes us forget that no man can receive or record any impression out of proportion to his own impressionability, his devotion, his patience and his love. This book is the story of a loving apprenticeship as long as life itself. [It is he concluded] a long, long happy love-story.” 1 1 Kennedy, Dr S.B., Paul Henry, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000, p.138-139