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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
ATurf Bog, Allna troohy, Co. Mayo; Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
€4,000 - 6,000
A mainly self-taught artist, James Humbert Craig grew up in Co. Down and briefly studied at the Belfast School of Art. He began
exhibiting his landscapes at the RHA in 1915, showing about 130 works there during his life, and was elected a full member of both
the RHA and RUA in 1928. Known for his renderings of Donegal, Connemara and Antrim scenes, Craig developed a style based on
tradition that is considered to be quintessentially Irish.
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 can-
vas 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.”
