Grace Henry HRHA (1868-1953) Misty Moonlight (c.1912) Oil on canvas 30 x 25cm (11¾ x 9¾'') Signed E.G. Henry Exhibited: ''Paul & Grace Henry Exhibition'' Belfast 1916 at The Underwood...

Grace Henry HRHA (1868-1953) Misty Moonlight (c.1912) Oil on canvas 30 x 25cm (11¾ x 9¾'') Signed E.G. Henry Exhibited: ''Paul & Grace Henry Exhibition'' Belfast 1916 at The Underwood Typewriter House. ''The National Gallery Millennium Wing opening Exhibition of 20th Century Irish Art'' January 2002 - December 2003; ''Collectors Eye'' Cat No. 9 The Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo January - February 2004, The Hunt Museum, Limerick March - April 2004; ''Grace Henry: The Person and the Artist'', Icon Exhibition, Jorgenson Fine Art, Dublin Jan 2010; ''The Moderns'' IMMA Oct 2010 - Feb 2011, Cat No. 7; ''A Celebration of Irish Art and Modernism'' The AVA Gallery, Summer 2011, Cat, No. 16 Literature: ''Grace Henry: The Person and the Artist'' by J.G. Guickshank, illustrated p14; ''The Moderns'' IMMA 2011, illustrated p42 ''A Celebration of Irish Art and Modernism'' full page illustration p24 Grace Henry had travelled extensively in Europe in the early years of the twentieth century, so that she would presumably have been aware of many of the developments of post-impressionist and symbolist art. In 1908, from an address in Surrey, she exhibited a number of paintings at the avant-garde Allied Artists Association in London, at which Roderic O'Conor, S.J. Peploe, Harold Oilman and Robert Bevan also exhibited. Wassily Kandinsky also exhibited with the AAA in 1909 alongside Paul Henry. It is little surprise therefore that Grace Henry's painting at the time she married and went to Ireland was so advanced, only surprising that she had progressed so much further than her husband, whose greatest debt was still to Whistler. 'Misty Moonlight' seems to have been painted around 1912-14, judging by the established chronology of her work, and it demonstrates more succinctly than any other known work by the artist, the advanced stage of abstraction Grace Henry had reached by this stage. The extremely simplified arrangement of flattened shapes, the muted and carefully harmonized tones, while the atmosphere is that of the more aesthetic symbolists, have an pure modernist treatment that is an advanced development of post-impressionism. Of British artists, Robert Bevan's very early work in France is very close to this painting, but little else would seem to pre-date Grace Henry's adoption of the principles of abstraction. David Bomberg's vorticist work dates from this time, and is outstanding within British modernism, and Vanessa Bell's much slighter experiments in non-figurative painting also would coincide closely with Grace Henry's work in time if not in manner. Certainly, within Irish art, this painting is currently unparalleled. It is also of interest that Grace Henry adopted such a progressive style to portray the ancient, untouched appearance and way of life of the Achill Islands, the cottage and peat stacks, the starry sky lighting up the edge of the water and the distant mountains. Perhaps this is a deliberate exposition of the belief that the underlying principles of much modernism are close to fundamental and eternal spiritual truths. It is remarkable that the painting found such a warm response in Belfast, Grace Henry's ''series of moonlight studies'' described by the reviewer of the Northern Whig (23rd March 1916) as her ''strong card...it is the mystery and beauty that appeal to her''.

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