WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 7 March 2022 from 6PM

64 When he first settled on Achill Island, in 1910, Paul Henry was struck by the harsh life of the people he found there, and in particular by the often difficult conditions in which they had to work. Yet despite these conditions, he said, they clung with a “dumb ferocity and affection” to their island. The omnipresent mountains, too, forced themselves upon his attention, for before going to Achill, he tells us, he had been a plain-dweller and the abruptness of the mountain contours now“disturbed” him (Henry, unpublished and undated story of life on Achill). On Achill, too, the sea was constantly encountered, its sudden changes of mood and temper often affecting life and fortune. The fragility of man’s survival in the face of the powers of nature, which made such an impact on Henry’s perceptions of the island, are clear to be seen in this striking picture, Lobster Fishermen off Achill. The simplicity of the composition, which comprises no more than four separate elements — the sky, the mass of the mountain which dominates all, the narrow strip of sea in the foreground and the tiny currach which provides a livelihood for the two fishermen — illustrates the Post-Impressionist force of Henry’s compositional technique at its best. The Whistlerian tones and the almost monochromatic palette also recall his student years in fin de siècle Paris. The closeness of the mountain —which must be Slievemore, the setting almost certainly being Dugort Bay — is at once romantic and menacing in its immutability. It is a similar composition to another Henry picture, Lobster Fishermen, West of Ireland, sold at de Vere’s, Dublin, 30 March 2004. Reviewing Henry’s 1917 Belfast exhibition the News-Letter (15 March 1917) commented, in a plausible reference to this picture, that the “warm tones of the sea and the sky”were “beautifully merged”. Dated 1916-17 on stylistic grounds and on the evidence of the signature, with a dot after the word Paul. The use of a coarsely woven canvas also compares with other Henry pictures of these years. Dr S. B. Kennedy November 2006.