ADAM'S - IMPORTANT IRISH ART, WEDNESDAY 29TH MARCH 2017 (Click Lot title for more images and to Place Bid)

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Oil on canvas mounted on board, 44.5 x 34.5cm (17½ x 13½’’)
Signed
Original artist’s label verso inscribed with title ‘John’
Provenance: From the estate of gallery owner Leo Smith and thence by descent to the current owner.
€ 3,000 - 5,000
Grace Henry (nee Mitchell) was born in comfortable surroundings to a Church of Scotland Minister, the second youngest of ten children. She lived and
studied in London, Brussels and Paris where she met and married Paul Henry in 1903.They returned to England and lived in Surrey for several years,
both deeply influenced by the avant garde Post Impressionist mood of the time. As a couple they spent almost a decade from 1912 living on Achill Island,
a career defining period for both of them, but particularly for her husband. The seeds of separation were sown in these years, as Grace began to travel
frequently to Dublin and London and to exhibit separately in Belfast in the 1920s.They founded the Dublin Painters Society with 6 other artists in 1920
but by the mid 1920s had separated from each other, although they never divorced.
In the 1930s she spent more of her time abroad but continued to show her work in Irish art exhibitions. During the Second World War she returned to the
west of Ireland, and exhibited regularly at galleries in Dublin and at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Her bold use of paint and fluid brushstrokes simplified
the composition of her paintings to its essential elements, leaving at their core the humanity and humble spirit of the figures within them, so often inspired
by the noble islanders she came across on Achill.
Her works are included in major collections such as the National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin,
Ulster Museum and Crawford Gallery.