Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MARCH 2024

Important Irish Art | 27 March 2024 www.adams.ie 13 3 PATRICK HENNESSY RHA (1915-1980) Never Ending Summer Oil on canvas, 64 x 76cm (25¼ x 30”) Signed Exhibited: Dublin, Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, November 1964, original label verso. € 6,000 - 8,000 Patrick Hennessy exhibited 23 paintings with a broad spectrum of subject matter, the content of his travels from the previous year, the Irish countryside, still lives, rose studies, mementos from Spain, and a number of paintings of Moroccan objects and countryside, Morocco was becoming a greater part of Hennessy’s life and he was spending up to six months of the year there, avoiding the Irish winters for health reasons. The painting ‘The Never Ending Summer’ a landscape is prob- ably a view existing only in Hennessy’s mind, a blue hazy sky, a dry arid vista with a high rocky mountain in the background dominating the centre of the canvas, a low shallow stretch of water clearly below normal level with sun bleached stones from the river bed completing the effect of a long dry period. The inclusion of a spray of brilliant red roses with luxuriant green foliage that dominate the foreground and contrasts sharply with the landscape is a Hennessy trademark and a device he used many times. The landscape has all the elements of a Hennessy capriccio. Kevin A. Ruttledge