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Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)
Grand Canal Dock, Ringsend, Dublin 1928
Oil on canvas 58 x 46cm (23 x 18”)
Signed
Exhibited: ‘Paul Henry’, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 19 February - 18
May 2003, Catalogue no. 76
Literature: “Paul Henry” NGI 2003, illustrated p.105
The composition of Grand Canal Dock is based on that of a preliminary charcoal drawing by Henry of the same date
(collection National Gallery of Ireland, 7601). In the closely modulated tones both the drawing and this painting
show the continued influence of his erstwhile teacher, James MacNeill Whistler, on Henry at the time, an influence
and clarity of thought that lingered in his work till late in his career. In the words of Brian O’Doherty, this clarity
of thought brought to the best of Henry’s work ‘a purity, a welcome lack of literary property which gives immediacy
to its perception’ and which, too, makes Paul Henry’s landscape important, for it ‘marks the point where work that
is regional and parochial in outlook is differentiated from work with more universal implications’ (Brian O’Doherty,
‘Paul Henry-The Early Years’, University Review, vol. 22, no. 7, 1960, pp. 23, 26).
The Grand Canal Dock was opened in April 1796, the canal itself linking Dublin with the river Shannon.The subject
matter, an industrial landscape, is unusual in Henry’s oeuvre. The charcoal drawing is reproduced in S. B. Kennedy,
Paul Henry: with a catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations, New Haven and London, Yale University
Press, 2007, p.141, catalogue number 226.
Dr S.B. Kennedy November 2014
€30,000 - 50,000