IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 27 MAY 2024 AT 6PM

36 A cluster of long, low, thatched cottages teeters precariously on the brim of a bright hill, sandwiched between a huge wall of mountain and sky and earth. They are seen from a distance allowing the viewer a glimpse of a cottage disappearing over the brow of the hill. A band of warm colour stretches across the canvas and leaps out from the cold mountain and sky in instant communication. The yellow ochre patchwork of small fields and haystacks and thatches creates a rich Klimt-like decoration against the Prussian blue background of the mountain. There are no trees, just touches of green vegetation on the fields with grey walls and the scene is lit from the right. Clouds rise up and over an immense pale blue sky with striated lines in the top left. Grey clouds muster in the top right corner, gathering the evaporated water from the unseen lake or sea on the other side of the hill. The curve of the spiralling clouds continues through the rounded hills of the foreground winding up in the golden section of the haystacks at the still centre of a permanently moving cosmos. The oil paint is applied in directional strokes throughout. A little blue mixed with white is laid on thinly for the sky, Prussian blue for the mountain and burnt umber for the band of earth in the foreground. White is mixed with blue for a small area of the sky and for the right hand side of the mountain. Warm yellows and ochres are applied thickly over the umber in parallel squares and rectangles in the middle band leaving curved stripes of umber as dividing walls. A little yellow ochre is mixed with umber and applied over the umber foreground. The cottages are painted with umber and overlaid with white for the walls and chimneys facing the light. A little blue and yellow is added to the white for the shaded gables. Yellow ochre is applied to the roofs and used to create the haystacks. The umber is left as edges, doorways, windows, and turf stacks. A little blue added to the yellow is scattered over the fields as patches of green vegetation and grey is painted over the walls in- between. The clouds are built up in layers of blue, then grey and pink and finally pure white. Fine dark and light edges are drawn in delicately to separate the clouds in places. A Village in the West was painted in the initial period of the artist’s stay in the west of Ireland in 1910 and was probably exhibited and sold in Dublin in 1917. 1 The painting is a nod to the sublime picturesque that lured tourists to the western region of Ireland from the early nineteenth century when its remoteness was already easily accessed by rail. Henry at first involuntarily adopted the gaze of the tourist In Achill. “Everywhere I went I saw strange new beauty.” 2 Such a painting provided a vision of space, quietude and beauty in contrast to the political turbulence of Dublin City and the horrors of the first world war. The classicism of Henry’s modernism was co-opted for the war effort and order in Ireland. His reminder of all that was beautiful could be seen also as symbolic as well as realistic. Henry captured a landscape that was as much an evocation of an historical time as a place where the bright ray of life prevented the sky from falling. Dr Mary Cosgrove, April 2024 1 Kennedy, S.B., “Paul Henry Catalogue Raisonné” 2007 p.189 2 Henry, P. “An Irish Portrait” 1951, p.5