Paul Henry, R.H.A., R.U.A.

Combridge Gallery, Dublin, where purchased by the present owner's family in 1940

London, Fine Art Society, "In Connemara", Paintings by Paul Henry, R.H.A., April 1934, no.20;
Dublin, Combridge Gallery, Recent Paintings of Kerry and Wicklow by Paul Henry, November 1937, no.18;
Southport, Atkinson Art Gallery, Temporary Loan exhibition, details untraced;
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Temporary Loan exhibition, 2002-2008.

Irish Independent, November 1937, illustrated;
S. B. Kennedy, Paul Henry: with a catalogue of the Drawings, Paintings, Illustrations, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, no.823, p.264, illustrated.

Original canvas in excellent original condition with strong passages of toothpaste impasto throughout. Under ultraviolet light, there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held in a painted plaster frame under glass; unexamined out of frame.
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This delightfully fresh picture shows Paul Henry at the height of his powers in the early-mid 1930s, a time when his domestic circumstances—which always reflected directly on his work—had become settled after the turmoil of the late 1920s, a period much dominated by the use of dark umbers and olive greens in his paintings. From the early thirties, however, until the end of his career his palette brightened and a sense almost of playfulness expressed in free, spontaneous brushwork characterizes his output. Now his colours are clear and crisp, the injunction of his erstwhile teacher, Whistler, that one should work out one's problems in one's mind and not on the palette (in the unlikely chance that they might come right) clearly expressed.

A Connemara Village was lent to the National Gallery of Ireland and hung in the Irish paintings room at the gallery's Millennium Wing from 2002 until 2008. Dated 1933-4 on stylistic grounds.

We are grateful to S.B. Kennedy for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this work.