Paul Henry’s view of Ferriter’s cove in Co. Kerry. (£120,000-180,000)
Paul Henry’s painting of Ferriter’s Cove on the Dingle Peninsula is a leading lot at Bonhams sale of British and Irish art in London on June 14. Though mostly associated with landscapes of Connemara and Mayo the artist who is arguably our most influential landscape painter of the 20th century was inspired by Kerry and the remoter regions along Ireland’s Atlantic seaboard.
Long before the fantastic and unusual topography of the area attracted the attention of the Star Wars producers Paul Henry brought his artists eye to Ferriter’s Cove, situated a few miles east of Ballyferriter, in 1933. “It is lovely” he wrote to James Healy in America, who acted as agent for him. “Wherever one turns there is material for dozens of pictures”.
He likened it to Cape Cod and felt that if he spent a lifetime there he would never exhaust all the possible subjects. Paul Henry went back again the following autumn and the drawings and paintings he made there were completed later at his studio north of Dublin. The visit produced enough work for his spring show Recent Paintings of Kerry and Connemara at the Combridge Gallery in Dublin in May 1935.
The painting, which was exhibited in Toronto in 1936 and has been in a corporate collection in the UK since 1938, is estimated at £120,000-180,000.