WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

46 The 1930s was a pivotal decade for Paul Henry which saw him exhibit extensively in Europe, the United States and in Dublin, from 1930, with Combridge’s Gallery which hosted the first of two one man shows that year and became his regular Dublin venue for the next two decades. Kennedys notes, “This period in Henry’s oeuvre demonstrates his particular understanding of the landscape borne through the experience of living in such places, a consciousness of the soft subtle terrain and dankness of the bog, the meagre lifestyle of the people it supports and the paucity of any crops grown there, the moody stillness of the scene with its suggestion of a life unchanged for centuries.” This sizeable work in oil - The Blue Hills Connemara - was acquired by Eustace Shott in the late 1940s from Combridge’s. That the painting had been specifically selected for reproduction by the gallery in 1937 as a photolithographic print is significant and demonstrates the strength of the work in terms of both its artistic merit and its innate power to communicate that sense of Irishness and identity to artistic audiences and the wider general public at that time. Kennedy observes, “…Because such images are familiar to us, notably through their widespread reproduction – during the artist’s lifetime and since – it is easy to ignore the achievement that they represent. Previously depictions of the West were in the main romantic and stereotypical… it was only after Jack B. Yeats went there in the early 1900s that a more realistic view of the landscape and of the life of its people began to emerge...” . Thus The Blue Hills Connemara will be at once both familiar and novel to those viewing the original oil painting some 80 years since it sold into a private Irish collection. For further reading see Kennedy, chapters nine and ten, p67-73. Fig 2 Printed by Hely’s for The Talbot Press., Dublin, 1932. With 45 photo engraved plates, 64 wood engraved headpieces and Gaelic uncial letters printed on yellow background, including illustrations by Paul Henry, Seán Keating, Seán O’Sullivan, Maurice MacGonigal, Harry Kernoff and others.