Henry Healy RHA (1902-1982) Loading the turf, a Connemara Harbour Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm (20 x 24'') Signed Provenance: George Gallery, where purchased in January 1992 by the current owner ...
Henry Healy RHA (1902-1982) Loading the turf, a Connemara Harbour Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm (20 x 24'') Signed Provenance: George Gallery, where purchased in January 1992 by the current owner Like many before him the painter found a theme in the western seaboard and life led there. This work is almost a composite of the western seaboard in the scene at a harbour possibly old Rossaveal in south Connemara. The hookers are making their approach to the harbour where the p?c?ns and gl?t?gs are unloading their cargo of turf. These boats plied the Connemara coast as far as Aran bringing supplies and turf to the wider area. Just outside the harbour a three manned neamh?g (currach) is being rowed to sea for a days fishing and in the foreground a man and boy approach with creel laden donkeys for their supplies of the Turf (peat). The painter uses the spars of the boats to create a foreground interest by anchoring the eye to the detail whilst the sea in the middle distance and the background landscape creates the other thirds of the composition. The artist painted extensively in the West of Ireland and at one time created an entire exhibition of sculptural fragments from monastic sites in the West of Ireland and also was well known for his depictions of marine subjects of great charm and liveliness from Connemara to Howth. Healy's later style became much looser in style and pigment with the use in his later works of a ''fatty'' pigment giving great surface interest to his compositions. This work is closer in style and vision to Keating and Lamb but retains his own quite distinctive ''eye'' upon the subject of this composition, which if not quite the pastoral idyll is evocative of a lifestyle now long vanished viz; that of the daily life led along the western seaboard in Ireland. Ciar?n MacGonigal **PLEASE NOTE, THIS LOT IS NOT DATED''
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