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No lot 149 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:15,000.00 - 20,000.00 EUR
 No lot  149 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958)
No lot 149 Paul Henry RHA (1876-1958) SEASCAPES (A PAIR) each signed and dated [1892] lower right oil on canvas 30 by 20cm., 12 by 8in. Provenance: By family descent since the late 19th century This pair of Seascapes are two of only eight works by Paul Henry known to survive from the earliest days of his formal studies in art. Painted when the artist was aged sixteen, they show the influence of his first serious tutor, Thomas Bond Walker (1861-1933). His first encounter with Walker, Henry later commented, “changed the whole course” of his life, for Walker introduced him to oil paints. “I was entranced”, he recalled years after, “for I was entirely ignorant of what paint could do” (Henry, Further Reminiscences, 1973, pages 44, 46). Thus, virtually on the spot, he determined to become a painter. In the course of time, Walker introduced his pupil to the work of the English artist Robert W. Fraser (fl.1874-c.1901), whom he greatly admired. Frazer specialised in painting scenes of boats on river estuaries and such places, and soon Henry began to emulate him. Seascapes date from this time and Fraser’s influence, in terms of subject matter, concept and execution, is clearly evident in both. In particular, the sense of calm and stillness evident in Seascapes is characteristic of Fraser’s work and was also in later years to become an attribute of Henry’s art at its best. Seascapes thus shows the state of Paul Henry’s development on the eve of his enrolling as a student at the Belfast Government School of Art, in the autumn of 1895, and before he set out for Paris, an event that revolutionised not just his art but the future course of Irish landscape painting. Seascapes are numbered 262 and 263 in S. B. Kennedy’s forthcoming catalogue of Paul Henry’s oeuvre. Dr S. B. Kennedy, Belfast, October 2005