James Humbert Craig RHA RUA (1877-1944) Loading the Turf, Co. Mayo Oil on canvas, 38 x 51cm (15 x 20'') Signed Provenance: This is thought to be one of four works by Craig purchased by J.P....

James Humbert Craig RHA RUA (1877-1944) Loading the Turf, Co. Mayo Oil on canvas, 38 x 51cm (15 x 20'') Signed Provenance: This is thought to be one of four works by Craig purchased by J.P. Reihill Snr from the Victor Waddington Galleries on November 12th, 1940, titled A Turf Bog, Allnatroohy, Co. Mayo; Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin This genre scene depicts men and women loading turf from a mound, in which the turf was stacked when cut, into waiting carts, which are drawn by donkeys. The composition is very loosely painted, some of the forms being merely blocked in, with areas of canvas remaining bare. The generally muted tone of the painting is enlivened here and there with dabs of yellow ochre and bright green. Until the 1950s James Humbert Craig was regarded as the premier landscape painter in Northern Ireland. Working predominantly in the Glens of Antrim where he had a house, and in County Donegal and Connemara, his canvases consistently depict billowing, cumulus clouds moving across grey-blue or parchment skies, with facets of bright sunlight flickering across broad mountain slopes and open moorlands. Commenting on his approach, John Hewitt remarks that ''he found his style in impressionism, not Impressionism of the divided touch, the broken colour, the rainbow palette, but of the swift notation of the insistent effect, the momentary flicker, the flash of light, the passing shadow.'' Born in Belfast, Craig spent his early years in Ballyholme, Co. Down, where he was educated at a private school. Craig derived little satisfaction from working in the family tea business but it enabled him to travel and paint, particularly in Switzerland and the south of France. In time, he turned a more serious eye to art as a profession, specifically to landscape painting. Apart from attending the Belfast College of Art for less than a term, Craig was self-taught. He was influenced in his early work by Paul Henry but as his career developed this became less apparent. He first exhibited at the RHA in 1915 at the relatively late age of thirty-seven when he showed a pair of coastal scenes near his home at Ballywater. In 1928 he was elected to both the RUA and the RHA and in that same year his work featured (along with that of Lavery and Henry), in an exhibition of Irish art at the Fine Art Society, London. Throughout the interwar period he continued to exhibit in Belfast and Dublin and also in London. In 1930 his work was included in the prestigious Exhibition of Irish Art in Brussels in 1930. Though he went on sketching tours of Connemara and Donegal Craig found so much stimulus in the scenery of the Glens of Antrim that he acquired a cottage at Cushendun and his work became closely identified with the Middle Glens thereafter. Craig had a significant following among younger artists and although he and his followers ignored European Modernism, they were perfectly in tune with the romantic attitudes prevalent in Ireland during the period. Craig, together with Paul Henry, Frank McKelvey, Charles Lamb and Maurice MacGonigal, comes closest to personifying a distinctive Irish School of Painting.

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