The Lobster Fisher

Details

Paul Henry, R.H.A. (1876-1958)
The Lobster Fisher
signed 'PAUL.HENRY.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Painted 1911-13

Provenance

with Bell Gallery, Belfast

Literature

P. Henry, Further Reminiscences, Belfast, 1973, p.55, illustrated. A. Crookshank and The Knight of Glin, The Painters of Ireland c. 1600-1920, London, 1978, p. 276, pl. 277 as 'Fisherman'.
T. Snoddy, Irish Artist's of the 20th Century, Dublin, 1996, p. 188 as 'The Lobster Pots, West of Ireland'.
S.B. Kennedy, Paul Henry, New Haven and London, 2000, p. 56, pl. 61.

Exhibited

Belfast, Pollock's Gallery, Pictures by Mr and Mrs Paul Henry, February-March 1913, no. 4.
Belfast, Magee's Gallery, Pictures by Mr and Mrs Paul Henry, March 1917.
Belfast, Ulster Arts Club, Seventy Years of Ulster Painting, 1972, no. 11 as 'The Lobster Pots'.
Dublin, Trinity College, Paul Henry 1876-1958, October 1973- January 1974, no. 46 as 'The Lobster Pots, West of Ireland'; this exhibition travelled to Belfast, Ulster Museum.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This is the earliest of a number of pictures by Paul Henry which are similar in theme and arrangement (The Lobster Pots, circa 1912-15, presently on loan to the National Gallery of Ireland, and A Grey Evening, Achill, 1917-19, for example). The simple elegance of the Post-Impressionist inspired composition with its bold two-part division of the picture plane, the narrative confined to the lower part, produces a remarkably forceful image which is intensified by the almost monochromatic palette. Reviewing Henry's exhibition at John Magee's Gallery, Belfast, in March 1917, the News-Letter (15 March) admired the artist's subtle manipulation of warm tones and sharp observation. He 'succeeds in making the scene intensely realistic', said the paper, 'and he achieves this not by deliberately striving for dramatic effect, but by rigidly adhering to the truth'. The handling of paint, with carefully applied brush strokes on an evenly worked paint surface, shows Henry at his very best at this time.

The Lobster Fisher was issued as an Eire 15p postage stamp on Monday 30 August 1976 to mark the centenary of Paul Henry's birth (fig. 1).

Provisionally numbered 0049 in S.B. Kennedy's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

Dr S.B. Kennedy

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