WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 May 2025 FROM 6PM

38 21 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) COTTAGES, WEST OF IRELAND, c.1920s oil on panel signed lower right 7.50 by 10in. (19.1 by 25.4cm) Frame Size: 14 by 16 (35.6 by 40.6cm) Provenance: Private collection, New York; Sold by private treaty, Clarke’s, Westchester, 8 May 2009; Private collection In 1912 Paul Henry and his wife, the artist Grace Henry, left England and settled on Achill Island where they spent seven productive years painting the local people and landscape. Paul Henry wrote extensively on his experience of Achill life in his autobiography, An Irish Portrait. On the village of Keel he wrote, “It was the most gregarious of villages, perhaps fifty houses in all, huddled close together as if for warmth and companionship, devoid of all plan... [w]hat seemed like leaf-thatched huts were the thatched roofs of the cottages and the straw-thatched hay stacks of the community. These latter were tethered, tied first of all circularly with straw ropes (sugans), then with heavier ropes crossing the tops diagonally and weighted with large stones. There was no order of any kind. There was no street; you could wander among the houses in any direction...Nearly every cottage had its stone-walled garden or haggard with its tiny grove of sally willows for basket making, and huge stacks of turf were before every door or piled up at the gable ends.” 1 Cottages, West of Ireland, c.1920s records in paint Henry’s fascination with and appreciation for life on the harsh Atlantic coast. Here he is not distracted by the weather, the cloud formations or the immense natural world which surrounds this community. Here the islanders’ lives take centre stage. Henry introduces the viewer with a wide view of an uneven path dotted with rocks and grassy mounds. The haphazard layout is emphasised by the artist’s cutoff composition to the left of the painting and through his spontaneous application of paint. To the centre is a straw-thatched haystack, tied and weighted as described, and in the distance white dots for chimneys, gable ends and distant dwellings. Secondary to the scene is the skyscape which is flatly painted with a single cumulus cloud hovering in the distance. Compositionally Cottages, West of Ireland, c.1920s shares similarities with a number of other examples from this period including Claddagh Village, 1928 (Kennedy, catalogue no. 674) and AWestern Village (no. 675) dated to the same year. Kennedy notes examples of similar compositions also recorded in Henry’s sketchbooks now in the Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. Adelle Hughes April 2025 1 Henry, Paul, An Irish Portrait, The Autobiography of Paul Henry, B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1951, Chapter IV, The New Life, p.49 €60,000-€80,000 (£50,850-£67,800 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot21