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James Humbert Craig RHA RUA (1877 - 1944)
Sunday Morning, Bloody Foreland
Inscribed Oil on board, 30 x 42cm (11¾ x 16½”)
Signed
John Magee gallery label verso
Although Belfast born painter James Humbert Craig studied briefly at the Belfast Art School for less than a term, he was com-
mitted to his career as a painter throughout his life. According to Crookshank and Glin; ‘His landscapes of Ulster and the glens
of Antrim are notable for their skies, their shadows and sense of ever-changing climate. He is rarely sentimental. Dungloe in the
Rosses or The Donegal Coast, though fine examples, are not entirely typical as they are more muted than many of his works where
the strong northern wind sweeps by cottage, lake and sea though the colours are rich, offset by deep shadows.’ (Ireland’s Painters,
289-90)
The subject of this painting is a group of people walking, most likely to mass on a Sunday morning.This would have been a com-
mon sight for many years throughout rural Ireland and led to walking regions, through fields and on tracks, been named ‘Mass
Paths.’ ‘Bloody Foreland,’ (‘Cnoc Fola/The Hill of Blood’), part of North Donegal’s coastline, is so called because the headland is
a mass of red granite that glows with a brilliant reddish hue in the evening at sunset.The views in this exposed region include the
islands Árainn Mór, Gabhla, Tory Island and Horn Head.The light here has been described as magical and undoubtedly this has
added to the appeal of the subject for Craig. In this painting, the artist has left areas of the board unpainted as was characteristic of
him and this further emphasises the setting. The paint is confidently handled and the artist projects an attitude through his com-
positions that indicate he knew exactly the moment when he had applied enough paint and could lay down his brush. Here, the
figures walk towards the viewer in small groups, two in the foreground and other groups at intervals on the road receding from the
right middle ground into the distance. These figures are predominantly loosely indicated but in some cases dress is more detailed,
the man in the group to the right for example is wearing a suit, with shirt and tie and a brown hat. The landscape is energetically
portrayed with varying earthy tones and brighter shades of green interspersed with highlights of white. Paint has been applied
with broad strokes and in some cases hills have been indicated with a single wide stroke.The stone wall is well captured as is the
little cottage with its stack of turf alongside and patchwork of fields surrounding. All elements combine to communicate a bygone
time in the rural countryside.
John Hewitt wrote ‘’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.’’ He was the
foremost landscape painter in Northern Ireland until the fifties and he inspired many followers. Hewitt further remarked “But
so firmly had he fixed his style, colour and subject matter on the manner..., by which a generation or two saw our landscape, that
he was followed by waves of disciples working within the same limits”. (83-4, Art in Ulster 1). It was through Craig’s extensive
popularity that he established ‘something of an expected convention for Ulster landscape’. (84). It is due to this fact, perhaps, that
viewers feel a familiarity for the artist’s work and style, even if they have not seen the painting in question previously. Harold
Minnis describes Craig’s ‘superb natural talent and warm humanity,’ and stated his paintings had a ‘dramatic and lasting effect’ on
the viewer. (George A Connell,The Natural Talents of J.H. Craig ‘The People’s Artist,’ Belfast 1988.)
John Hewitt, Art in Ulster 1, Belfast, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1977.
Anne Crookshank and Knight of Glin, Ireland’s Painters 1600-1940, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2002
Marianne O’Kane Boal, November 2014
€4,000 - 6,000