Paul Henry RHA RUA (1876-1958) Thatched Cottages with Lake and Mountains Beyond (1933-5) Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24'') Signed Provenance: Sale: Sotheby's, London, 1 May 1991, lot 55, as...

Paul Henry RHA RUA (1876-1958) Thatched Cottages with Lake and Mountains Beyond (1933-5) Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm (20 x 24'') Signed Provenance: Sale: Sotheby's, London, 1 May 1991, lot 55, as Cottages in Connemara; de Veres, Dublin: 25 May 1993, lot 69, as West of Ireland Landscape with Cottage and Lake, repr. in colour 16 April 2002, lot 125, repr. in colour, acquired by the Oriel Gallery. Literature: S. B. Kennedy, Paul Henry: with a catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2007, catalogue number 757, p. 251. Possibly a scene in Co. Kerry, an area that Henry first visited in late 1932 or early 1933 when he stayed at Glenbeigh. The visit was a watershed in his life, for throughout much of the previous decade his relationship with Grace, his first wife, had deteriorated and culminated the break up of their marriage in 1929. However, only by the spring of 1934 were the legalities of the situation resolved. Thus, when he again visited Kerry in September of that year, accompanied by Mabel Young who later became his second wife, did his mood lighten as did his palette in terms of tone and colour. The freshness of this landscape, with the light blues of the sky and the absence of angst, which characterizes so many of his earlier paintings, reflects the artist's more buoyant mood. Henry was enchanted with the Kerry landscape. 'It is lovely. Wherever one turns there is material for dozens of pictures', he wrote to a friend in New York (Henry to James Healy, letter of 13 December 1934, James Healy Papers, Healy Collection of Modern Irish Literature, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries). He continued, saying 'I felt that if I spent a lifetime ? I would never exhaust all the possible subjects'. Besides the area around Glenbeigh, he explored the peninsula as far westwards as Waterville. Many of the resultant pictures were included in his exhibition, Recent Paintings of Kerry and Connemara, at the Combridge Gallery, Dublin, in May 1935. The show was well received by the newspapers, the Irish Press (7 May 1935) perceptively noting the 'paler key' of the pictures, as is well exemplified in this picture. Dr S.B. Kennedy, May 2013

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