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135 GRACE HENRY HRHA (1868-1953) Boats at ChioggiaOil on board, 24 x 32cm (9½ x 12½’’)
Provenance: With the Peppercanister Gallery, (label verso).
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 exhibi-
tions. 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.
€ 2,000 - 4,000