James Humbert Craig RUA RHA (1878 - 1944) Loading Turf in Connemara Oil on canvas, 38 x 50.8cms (15 s 20'') Signed Provenance: Purchased by the current owners' father at the Victor Waddington...

James Humbert Craig RUA RHA (1878 - 1944) Loading Turf in Connemara Oil on canvas, 38 x 50.8cms (15 s 20'') Signed Provenance: Purchased by the current owners' father at the Victor Waddington Galleries 1940 thence by descent. Exhibited: ''Ireland: Her People and Landscape'' The AVA Gallery, June - Sept 2012, Cat. No. 8 Literature: ''Ireland: Her People and Landscape'' Exhibition Catalogue, full page illustration p15 During the 1920s and 1930s J. H. Craig spent a good deal of time painting in Connemara and County Donegal. Virtually a self-taught painter, the loose Impressionist brushwork and fluid paint evident in this picture are typical of Craig's oeuvre in general. Almost certainly painted out of doors, Loading Turf shows what Anthony Liddell called the 'extraordinary rapidity' of Craig's technique and ably conveys the very nature of the landscape, which was one of the artist's major accomplishments. 'No one,' said Liddell, 'can more confidently transfer to canvas the superb brilliance which bursts at moments upon the Irish scene' (Liddell, The Ulsterman, 1933, p. 19). Here, the heavy clouds massing overhead, which cast their shadows on the distant hills, add a gentle theatrical quality to the scene. Reviewing Craig's first ever one-man show at the Mills Hall, Merrion Row, Dublin, in 1923 the Irish Times (16 October 1923) thought his pictures were to be 'lived with', finding them 'restful and growing on one by their rhythmic composition and true lighting'. And in 1925 the Irish Statesman (5 December 1925) considered that his greatest strength lay in his pastoral scenes, a view that George Russell (AE) concurred with a year later when he wrote of Craig, 'out in all weathers' delighting in the nature he painted. 'I have seen Corots ? hung in important galleries which have no more moving beauty,' he said (Russell, writing as Y.O., Irish Statesman, 4 December 1926). Dated 1930s on stylistic grounds. Dr. S.B. Kennedy, May 2012

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