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Paul Henry RHA RUA (1876-1958)
Waterville, Co.Kerry
Oil on canvas laid on board, 40.5 x 46cm (16 x 18”)
Signed
Provenance: Combridge Gallery, Dublin, 1946, by whom lent for a time to the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin; thence
the artist’s studio; Mrs McAreavey, acquired from Mabel Young in 1962; from the estate of the late James Gibson
This is probably the picture of this title that Paul Henry
first exhibited at the Combridge Gallery, Dublin, in Octo-
ber 1945. It was almost certainly painted in the summer of
that year when Henry and his second wife, Mabel Young,
stayed at the Great Southern Hotel in Waterville.They had
first visited the Iveragh Peninsula a decade earlier, in 1932,
staying on the northern side of the Peninsula at Glenbeigh.
Paul was enchanted by the area. ‘It is lovely. Wherever one
turns there is material for dozens of pictures … I felt that
if I spent a lifetime … I would never exhaust all the pos-
sible subjects,’ he wrote to a friend, James Healy, in New
York (letter of 13 December 1934, Healy Papers, Stanford
University Libraries).The Peninsula produced a paler key in
his paintings, as the Irish Times commented (7 May 1935),
which contrasts with the heavier, more brooding works of
the late 1920s and early 1930s when his marriage to his first
wife, Grace, was breaking up and at a time when he had
other domestic difficulties. By 1945, with a much more set-
tled lifestyle, Paul and Mabel returned to Kerry-there is no
record of their having been there since the 1930s-and, stay-
ing at Waterville, they used that as a base to explore much
of the Peninsula.The area around Waterville has welcomed
many celebrities over the years, the most notable, perhaps,
being Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin. The Iveragh Pen-
insula, of course, is traversed by the famous Ring of Kerry
tourist route.
The stretch of water depicted in this composition is prob-
ably Lough Currane, which lies immediately to the east of
Waterville, which is the town crowning the hilltop in the
middle distance.The ‘paler key’ that typifies Henry’s work in
these late years of his painting career-he suffered almost total
blindness shortly after this picture was painted-is well seen in
this composition, where the mounting cumulus clouds in the
sky are reflected in the sea in the foreground, which is almost
without detailing of any sort, save for the masterly dexterity
of the brushwork. In this regard, Waterville, Co, Kerry may
be compared with one of Henry’s finest late works, Kinsale,
of 1939 (Kennedy, 2007, number 994).
For a discussion of Henry’s other Iveragh Peninsula pictures
see S. B. Kennedy, ‘Paul Henry’s Iveragh Paintings’, in John
Crowley & John Sheehan (eds.), The Iveragh Peninsula: A
Cultural Atlas of the Ring of Kerry, Cork, Cork University
Press, 2009, pp.441-4.
Dr. S.B. Kennedy
Exhibited:
Paintings by Paul Henry, R.H.A.
, Combridge’s Gallery, Dublin, 23 October-6 November 1945 (cata-
logue number 9, as Waterville);
Pictures by Paul Henry, RHA,
Heal & Son, Tottenham Court Road, Lon-
don, from 14 January 1946 (5);
Paintings and Charcoals: Paul Henry RHA
, Waddington Galleries, South
Anne Street, Dublin, 21 February- 3 March 1952 (21);
Paintings and Drawings by Paul Henry,
The Stu-
dio, Sidmonton Square, Bray, until 8 November 1956 (10);
Paul Henry: Retrospective Exhibition
, Ritchie
Hendriks Gallery, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and Belfast Museum & Art Gallery, Belfast, May-July
1957 (10);
Paul Henry: Paintings and Drawings
, Shannon Airport, Limerick, August 1957 (10)
Literature:
S. B. Kennedy:
Paul Henry,
2000, p. 136;
Paul Henry: with a catalogue of the
Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations,
2007, pp. 82, 308, catalogue number 1063 (both the 2000
and 2007 books published in New Haven and London by Yale University Press)
€25,000 - 35,000
