Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)
The Mountain Road Near Salruck, Killary Bay, Co. Galway
Oil on board, 17.5 x 24cm (7 x 9½'')
Signed
John Magee label verso, typed label suggesting a date of May...

Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)
The Mountain Road Near Salruck, Killary Bay, Co. Galway
Oil on board, 17.5 x 24cm (7 x 9½'')
Signed
John Magee label verso, typed label suggesting a date of May 1923 which is probably the date it was bought.

Provenance: Important Irish Art sale, these rooms, 19th September 1985, Cat. No.134, where purchased by the current owner.

Exhibited: 'Pictures by Paul & Grace Henry', Dublin Painters Gallery, June 1922;
'Mr. & Mrs.Paul Henry', Magees Gallery, Belfast, as The Mountain Road, from 12 April 1923.

Literature: S. B. Kennedy, Paul Henry: with a catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2007, p. 218, catalogue number 580, as Mountainy Road, where it is dated c. 1921-2.

Reviewing the Henrys 1922 exhibition at the Dublin Painters Gallery the Irish Times noted (17 June 1922): Only once does Mr. Henry break into an almost sensuous riot of colour, when he paints his Mountainy Road hills, whose blue is a delight in itself. A year later, when the same picture was exhibited at Magees Gallery, Belfast, the Northern Whig (12 April 1923) was more eulogistic: Dark blues and purples predominate, it said, and the vast presence of the hills overhang the landscape, emphasising the loneliness of the little byway which serpentines its path into the hollows of the hills. The little road is the path of man, but the feet of God are upon the mountains. How small is man, how vast are the immortal hills. The emotion is one of melancholy, but a melancholy which is qualified by the purifying sense of beauty. There is a label of the John Magee Gallery on the reverse. There is also a type-written label with the title and date on the reverse.

Dr. S.B. Kennedy September 2016

 

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