Adam's Important Irish Art Wednesday May 30th 2018

62 44 PAUL HENRY RHA (1877-1958) Portrait of a Lady (c.1910-12) Oil on canvas board, 22 x 13cm (8¾ x 5’’) Signed; also inscribed on reverse in the artist’s hand ‘For Dear Grandmama from Paul’ Paul Henry was born in Belfast and attended the Belfast School of Art. He travelled to Paris in 1898, where he studied at the Academie Julian and was influenced by the rural realism of Jean Francois Millet. He later moved to Academie Carmen recently opened by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In Paris he met his first wife Grace and in 1903 they were married. In London where he worked until 1910 illustrating books and magazines, Henry moved to Achill Island in 1912, where the local land- scape became the main subject for his oil paintings. This is an early Paul Henry, as the dot in the signature indicates. The age of the woman is uncertain, but given the form of the signature, as the general hesitancy shows, it is evidentially early in Henry’s career, possibly around c.1910-12. It was certainly done before he went to Achill Island. The portrait is numbered 1345 in S. B. Kennedy’s on-going cataloguing of Paul Henry’s oeuvre. S. B. Kennedy, April 2018 € 6,000 - 8,000