Paul Henry

Paul Henry, born in Belfast where he enrolled at the Belfast School of art, left for Paris in 1898 enrolling in the Academie Julian. Although he spent a comparatively short time in Paris, he became one of the best-known Irish artist in Paris at the end of the century. Henry became especially competent in the use of charcoal, which became his favorite medium. As an Ulster youth he admired the work of Jean Francois Millet, the Barbizon painter of French peasant life. When he finally saw pictures by Millet in Paris, he was disappointed, for he had just been introduced to Impressionist paintings, and now found Millet lacking in vitality. However, while living in Achill Island, off County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, the deep influence of Millet was re-awoken. Millet's archetypal poses began to appear among Henry's scenes of Irish peasants. He began to paint their daily activities: potato digging turf cutting, harvesting seaweed, and fishing. His admiration for Millet was eclipsed by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1843-1903) . When Whistler opened a new studio in Paris, Henry became his student. Whistler's emphasis on technique and his style were a great influence on Henry.

After moving to Dublin, Henry became active in the local art scene, and in 1920, he and his wife Grace Mitchell Henry, together with a number of other painters including Jack B. Yeats and Mary Swanzy, founded the Society of Dublin painters. By then Henry had developed a style of painting that changed little for the rest of his career. During his early years on Achill he had painted pictures of people, but he then moved to landscape, with a few elements, a mountain, a lake and some cottages, placed in a bold composition, and a cloud-filled sky accounting for more than half of the picture space.

Lakeside Cottages, c.1930

Paul Henry was a great individualist, who influenced many other painters. He created a new type of Irish landscape painting that was unromantic and sympathetic to the lifestyle and environment of the poorest people of the west of Ireland. In his use of mass and color, he was the first artist working in Ireland who painted in the post-Impressionist style. He never became an academic painter and his canvases were devoid of literary references. Although Henry's later output is repetitive, works like Lakeside Cottages are pure landscapes which guarantee him an important place in the history of Irish painting. Lakeside Cottages, painted about 1930, is a quintessential work by Paul Henry, redolent of a simple, disciplined, rural way of life, free from the advance of technology.

During the 1920s a number of Henry's works were reproduced as posters and distributed in Ireland and abroad. The popularity of these images as the standard view of the west of Ireland in tourist literature and in government publications created such a demand for similar pictures that Henry became a victim of his own imagery.

Spring in Connemara, c. 1930 Connemara Landscape
Cottages In Connemara

In Connemara Turf Sacks In Connemara
A Western Lough

Achill Cottages Achill Head
Fishing Boat Achill

Blasket Island Bog Cutting
Cloudy Day

The Roadside Cottages Cottages by A Still Lough
Cottages by the Lake

Glencree Dusk
Evening on the Bog

Misty Morning Mountain and Lake
Mountain and Lake After Rain

Launching the Currach Scene on Aran Island
Silent Waters

Thatched Cottages On Killary Bay
The Road to the Mountains

The Tower The Watcher
Turf Sacks

Turf Sacks By A Pool