IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 9 MARCH 2026

36 This scene almost certainly depicts the Maamturk mountains, viewed from Kylemore Lough in County Galway, with Letterbreckaun, which rises to over 600 metres, dominating the range. It is an area in which Henry often worked during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The composition is similar to the artist’s AWestern Landscape, of 1927-8 (Kennedy 2007, number 669). Landscape, Connemara is dated 1932-5 on stylistic grounds. Dr S. B. Kennedy By the early 1930s, when the present work was painted, Paul Henry had settled into life in Carrigoona Cottage in Enniskerry County Wicklow with his partner, and later his second wife, the artist Mabel Young RHA (1889-1974) whom he had first met in 1924. The mid-1920s had been fraught with both marital and financial troubles for Henry. His marriage to the artist Grace Henry HRHA (1868-1953) was breaking down - cracks had begun to appear in their relationship as early as 1916 following their time on Achill - and by the mid-1920s the damage had become irreparable. Henry was also somewhat a victim of his own success as demand for his original paintings soared following the mass reproduction of his images in posters for the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company. Kennedy describes how he became, “...trapped in his own imagery... [losing] much of the sparkle of enthusiasm and inventiveness of his earlier period. His compositional technique became stagnant, and he turned against any thought of further development.” 1 At this point he was based in Dublin and rarely visited the West of Ireland. Life with Young in Enniskerry however reinvigorated the artist. Kennedy describes, “Henry’s palette, like his mood, lightened as his financial and domestic problems faded.” 2 By September 1934 he was legally separated and it would appear his thirst for inspiration had returned following a holiday in County Kerry. Kennedy writes how Henry’s “...mood and palette brightened noticeably… his paint now fluid and heavily laden with linseed oil… applied with relish and a reinvigorated sense of purpose characterises his work, a development that typifies him till the 1940s…” 3 The present work would certainly seem to reflect a renewed passion in his surroundings. The dramatic movement of the clouds in the upper third of the composition evokes a sense of enthusiasm and joy, calling to mind Sean O’Faolain’s words “special drama of mobile light” [in his introduction to Henry’s autobiography An Irish Portrait]. This is not a static cumulus cloud looming over the land but a commotion of them whisking across a vibrant blue sky. Here their reflection in the freshwater of Kylemore Lough in the foreground ripples out towards the viewer and the combination of horizontal and vertical movement from above and below create quite the dynamic scene. The middle ground is knitted into the composition through the delicate, upward brushstrokes of the lakeside vegetation that weave from the lower right corner through to the centre of the painting, where a cluster of trees is the focal point. Dark horizontal lines in shades of blue and brown create definition here, while the cluster of rocks in the lower right of the composition - a pictorial device used several times by Henry in works such as Cottages by a Lake, Achill (sold through these rooms as lot 17, 11 March 2024) - provide balance; their colour and form echoing the mountain range in the distance. Adelle Hughes February 2026 Footnotes 1 Kennedy, S.B., Lives of Irish Artists Paul Henry 1876-1958, Town House, Dublin in association with the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1991, p.30 2 Kennedy, S.B., Paul Henry, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland, 19 February - 18 May 2003, p.116 3 Ibid., p.17