IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 DECEMBER 2025

46 26 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) THE GREAT SUGAR LOAF, COUNTY WICKLOW, c.1929-30 oil on canvas signed lower left; with John Magee label on reverse 20 by 24in. (50.8 by 61cm) Frame Size: 27 by 31.5in. (68.6 by 80cm) Provenance: John Magee, Belfast; Private collection This painting most likely originated from a simple charcoal drawing and was completed in the studio built by the artist Paul Henry at Carrigoona Cottage where he lived with Mabel Young from 1929. It describes a windswept tree and stone wall set starkly against a distant, misty mountain called the Great Sugar Loaf. The Little Sugar Loaf mountain is portrayed in front of the distant peak with a rolling hill between it and the foreground. At five hundred and one metres, the Great Sugar Loaf overlooked the village of Kilmacanogue in which Henry lived. Known as Ó Cualann in Gaeilige from the local fifth century tribe Cualann, the Sugar Loaf is part of the Wicklow mountains which sheltered Irish rebellion for centuries. United Irishmen took refuge there during the 1798 rebellion and anti-Treaty forces rallied briefly there during Henry’s lifetime. Uncharacteristically for a painting by Henry there are no clouds in the sky which is broken only by the distant quartzite peak and the foreground tree. There are no people either with only the hand-built stone wall to remind us of their absence. The palette is subdued and almost monochromatic with an overall green finish. There is a hint of a warm, perhaps ochre undercoat. The mountains are painted over this with a blue tinged Paynes’s Grey resulting in a green effect and this is strengthened in stages towards the foreground and then washed over the stones and bushes to produce texture and demarcation lines. A lighter green mixed with yellow is applied to the foreground. The whole image is covered with a paler layer with added white overlapping and softening outlines and edges of mountains, stones and tips of outstretched branches. The foreground is covered in short widely spaced vertical strokes that pull it nearer to the viewer. Vertical white scumbling is applied to the mountain tops. The single primed canvas helps a smooth application of paint with short horizontal marks to be found only on close inspection densely packed together on the sky and mountains. Paint is applied more fluidly on the tree bark with lighter more warm colours on the right hand side hinting at the rising sun. (continued on page 48)