Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 8th December 2021

120 93 PAUL HENRY RHA (1877-1958) Western Lake and Mountain Landscape (c.1927-29) Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 61cm (16 x 24’’) Provenance: With the Oriel Gallery, Dublin. € 70,000 - 100,000 After the best part of a decade settled in Achill, during which he produced some of his most iconic work, Paul Henry returned to live in Dublin. During this period he continued to produce work that relied heavily on his experience of living in the West of Ireland. During the mid 1920s, and at a time when his relationship with his wife Grace was beginning to fracture, much of his work portrayed a calm serenity of which the present work is a prime example. The monochromatic tone in this work is likely derived from James MacNeill Whistler’s influ- ence, with the paring back of the landscape’s elements into an almost abstract representa- tion of a scene, which is most probably that of Achill Sound. The sense of stillness in the composition and the modulated tones all point to work from this period of Henry’s oeuvre.