ADAM'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MARCH 2026

Important Irish Art | 25 March 2026 www.adams.ie 37 23 WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT (1858-1932) The End of The Fair, Back to the Island (1910) Watercolour, 35.5 x 55.5cm (13¾ x 21¾’’) Signed € 4,000 - 6,000 William Henry Bartlett, born on the Isle of Wight, was the son of art dealer John Searle Bartlett. He trained in Paris in the mid-1870s at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian under William-Adolphe Bou- guereau. Likely introduced to Ireland in the late 1870s by the American artist Howard Helmick, he began painting scenes of daily life in Connemara and Achill, adopting what William Laffan described as “an almost ethnographic approach.” Bartlett focused on local occupations—fishing, gathering seaweed, ferrying cattle, and, in this 1910 work returning from the fair with sheep. While his western seascapes are assuredly handled, his vivid depictions of rural life distinguish him from many contemporaries. By 1900 he had settled seasonally in Donegal, purchasing a cottage on Inis Mhic an Doirn (Rutland Island), be- tween Burtonport and Arranmore. He exhibited a Donegal view at the 1906 Paris Salon and, the following year, showed Storm Bound in the Rosses at the Irish International Exhibition. The Irish Times praised his work as true to nature and evocative of the spirit of north-west Donegal.