€60,000 - €80,000
Paul Henry RHA (1877-1958) A Bog Road in Kerry (c.1934/9) Oil on canvas 35 x 40cm (13¾ x 15¾”) Signed; inscribed with title verso Provenance: Sale, these rooms, 9/10/1980, lot 44, illus.; with Oriel Gallery, Dublin; Private collection, Dublin. Literature: Dr. S.B. Kennedy, 'Paul Henry - Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations', Yale 2007, Catalogue no.904, Illus. p. 279 A feint inscription on the reverse suggests that the title is A Bog Road in Kerry and the composition, freedom of brushwork and style certainly confirms this suggestion and also suggests a likely date in the mid to late 1930s. The work is very much in keeping with Henry’s work of this period and is aligned with those works that Dr. S.B. Kennedy suggests are scenes in Co. Kerry - with simple bogland compositions and vigorous brushstrokes. The delicately modeled deep blue mountains provide a sense of solidity to the work and the inky blackness of the turf stacks grounds the composition, while the pale browns in the foreground generates much welcome lightness. Paul Henry liked the Dingle Peninsula and was always happy there. ‘It is lovely. Wherever one turns there is material for dozens of pictures’, he wrote to James Healy, his dealer in America. He explored the whole area (Mabel, his second wife, had a motor car) which reminded him of Cape Cod, ‘very lonely & wild but not very paintable...nicer at a distance’, he ventured to Healy. But he made numerous sketches which later, in the studio, were turned into paintings. This painting may have been made from one of those sketches.
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