Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) Cottages by the Sea, (c.1935-40)...
Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) Cottages by the Sea, (c.1935-40) Oil on canvas board, 35.5 x 40.5 (14 x 16) Signed Provenance: Acquired by the present owner's father and thence by descent. Literature: S.B Kennedy, Paul Henry Paintings Drawings Illustrations, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2007, (no. 939, p.285)
Cottages by the Sea distils the vision that made Paul Henry the defining painter of the Irish landscape in the early twentieth century. A cluster of whitewashed, thatched cottages sits low on a russet headland, dwarfed by an immense, luminous sky. Below, a pale curve of strand gives way to shallows of silvery blue, with dark rocks anchoring the composition at the water's edge.
Henry first travelled to Achill Island in 1910, intending a brief stay, and remained for almost a decade. There he abandoned the tonal conventions of his Paris and Whistler-influenced training and developed a language of his own, one of simplified forms, a restricted palette and a profound sense of space and silence. Later he settled in Dublin and, from the 1920s, returned repeatedly to the west of Ireland, to Connemara, Mayo, Donegal and Kerry. The works of the 1930s shows a mature artist at his most assured. Detail is edited away, the figure is largely absent, and the cottage becomes a quiet emblem of human presence in an elemental setting.
Here, the handling is characteristically economical. The sky, the painting's dominant element, is built from soft, scumbled passages of cream, lilac-grey and pale ochre. The hills are modelled in broad strokes of burnt sienna and orange, punctuated by blue-black accents of bog and shadow. The crisp white gables of the cottages, rendered in thick impasto, catch the light and form the focal point of the composition. The cool, shimmering blues of the bay offset the warmth of the land, a tension of complementary colours that Henry exploited to great effect.
Henry's west of Ireland landscapes, with their lyrical restraint and their poetry of light and weather, shaped the visual identity of a new Ireland and continue to command a devoted following.
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Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) Cottages by the Sea, (c.1935-40) Oil on canvas board, 35.5 x 40.5 (14 x 16) Signed Provenance: Acquired by the present owner's father and thence by descent. Literature: S.B Kennedy, Paul Henry Paintings Drawings Illustrations, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2007, (no. 939, p.285)
Cottages by the Sea distils the vision that made Paul Henry the defining painter of the Irish landscape in the early twentieth century. A cluster of whitewashed, thatched cottages sits low on a russet headland, dwarfed by an immense, luminous sky. Below, a pale curve of strand gives way to shallows of silvery blue, with dark rocks anchoring the composition at the water's edge.
Henry first travelled to Achill Island in 1910, intending a brief stay, and remained for almost a decade. There he abandoned the tonal conventions of his Paris and Whistler-influenced training and developed a language of his own, one of simplified forms, a restricted palette and a profound sense of space and silence. Later he settled in Dublin and, from the 1920s, returned repeatedly to the west of Ireland, to Connemara, Mayo, Donegal and Kerry. The works of the 1930s shows a mature artist at his most assured. Detail is edited away, the figure is largely absent, and the cottage becomes a quiet emblem of human presence in an elemental setting.
Here, the handling is characteristically economical. The sky, the painting's dominant element, is built from soft, scumbled passages of cream, lilac-grey and pale ochre. The hills are modelled in broad strokes of burnt sienna and orange, punctuated by blue-black accents of bog and shadow. The crisp white gables of the cottages, rendered in thick impasto, catch the light and form the focal point of the composition. The cool, shimmering blues of the bay offset the warmth of the land, a tension of complementary colours that Henry exploited to great effect.
Henry's west of Ireland landscapes, with their lyrical restraint and their poetry of light and weather, shaped the visual identity of a new Ireland and continue to command a devoted following.
% from the market value
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
