10 by 12.25in. (25.4 by 31.1cm)

Title: A BOG NEAR DINGLE, COUNTY KERRY, c.1928-30
Frame dimensions: 15.5 by 18in. (39.4 by 45.7cm)
Note: The present work is dated c.1928-30 on stylistic grounds, and numbered 1269 in S. B. Kennedy's cataloguing of Paul Henry's oeuvre.The scene is a bog with turf stacks in the foreground and silhouetted mountains in the distance, all together under a huge sky. The title tells us that the place is a bog near Dingle in County Kerry, the most western part of Ireland, described by the artist Paul Henry as " a very lonely and wild place, not very paintable … nicer at a distance". (1)This little oil painting clearly demonstrates the spontaneity and originality of the ébauche, highly prized historically in French academic art circles. The artist produced many such sketches on small, smooth panels using them as the basis for larger works on canvas painted back in his studio.In the open air he would work quickly on the prepared surface, already divided into a grid of three-inch squares with diagonals and in this case, painted a pale blue.The outline of the mountains, the edge of the bog in the middle distance and turf stacks and the undulating outlines of the bog in the foreground were drawn quickly with charcoal or a dry brush in the lower third of the panel, the upper two thirds, criss-crossed by the diagonals, being left empty to contain the sky.Clouds were blocked in with yellow ochre and white, softening the edges of the diagonals and allowing patches of the pale blue undercoat to peep through in places. The blue mixed with the yellow and white to create the light grey was used between the yellow clouds. A darker grey made with a little Prussian blue and yellow ochre creates heavier clouds on the left.The light grey and pale ochre is then applied wet on wet at the edges of the clouds and the pale cloud colour is dabbed over the whole of the sky. Prussian blue is mixed with a little black to block in the mountains and delineate their edge against the sky.The turf stacks coloured with burnt umber with some Prussian blue establish a narrow foreground. The same colours are used to outline the bog which slopes downwards towards the centre. A bright yellow ochre is applied thickly along the middle horizon of bog vegetation with burnt umber used again wet on wet on top in directional brush strokes in the foreground. Finally thicker impasto yellow ochre and white is laid on to parts of the clouds to add warmth and to help create the aerial perspective effect of the sky looming towards and above the viewer.Using short directional brush strokes to blur the edges of the underlying geometrical structure, Henry modulates this limited palette to create form and to achieve volume, whilst all the time retaining the Modernist emphasis on flatness.Henry's task was to subjugate the content of the painting, the Kerry bog and its locality, with its rich archeological and linguistic associations, to the techniques of Modernism exemplifying the art critical debates taking place in Dublin during the 1920s and onwards.The brilliance of this object of great visual pleasure lies in how Paul Henry has managed to balance the heavy associations of its title, the location of post-Treaty grief, with the general effect of colour and light in a landscape "not very paintable" unless viewed from a distanceDr. Mary CosgroveMay 20221. Kennedy S.B., Paul Henry 2000, p.119. Kennedy writes that, according to a letter to Richard Campbell, Paul Henry and Mabel Young "stayed in a bungalow at Glenbeigh that belonged to a friend, Patrick Browne then Professor of Mathematics at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth." It is more likely they stayed in Browne's famous Tigh na Cille in Dunquin.

Some light cracking visible on close inspection. Otherwise very good condition.

oil on panel

signed lower right