Paul Henry RHA (1877-1958) The Bog Pool (c.1921-22) Oil on canvas 50.8 x 61cm, (20" x 24") SignedProvenance: A midwestern library, United States; Sale, Skinner, Boston, 2/3/2012; Private Collection, Ireland. Exhibited: Dublin, Dublin Painters' Gallery, 'Exhibition of Pictures by Paul and Grace Henry', 17 June-1 July 1922 (catalogue no 6); New York, Hackett Gallery, Paintings by Paul Henry, 10-22 March 1930 (catalogue no 14); Boston, Grace Horne's Gallery, 'Paintings of Ireland by Irish Artists', 31 March-18 April 1930 (catalogue no.10). ‘The Bog Pool’ was numbered 1264 in the late Dr. S. B. Kennedy's previously ongoing cataloguing of Paul Henry's oeuvre.In The Bog Pool, Henry is working on a much larger scale, and he is embracing the monumentality of the landscape, enhanced by the absence of people or cottages to distract the eye away from the main focus of the composition. Another work on a similar scale can be seen in An Irish Bog dated to 1923 – 25 (S.B Kennedy, no. 606) or, albeit on smaller format, Bog at Evening, 1922 – 23 (S.B Kennedy, no.591). Both works are comparable in their composition to The Bog Pool and together they represent the set pieces that would become iconic images of the West of Ireland. As is expected in this period, people are scarce, focusing on the landscape, without any cottages or references to the tools used to carry out work on the bogs. Though the very presence of turf stacks, cut into sods and piled one on top of the another, acknowledges the work and livelihoods of those nearby communities. The setting is most likely Achill in Connemara, a place that captured his attention and dominated his oeuvre. Henry visited for the first time in 1910 and initially focused on the people of the island community. This work, painted in the 1920s, reflects a movement towards the pure landscape genre which had begun after his first few years of living there. It is an uninterrupted view of sky, mountains and marsh lands. The typical Henry palette is employed with purple for the mountains, the inky black of the turf stacks and lightened by the yellow tones of the grasses. The influence of impressionism is evident in the handling of the paint, applied in varying directions. He uses quick upright strokes for the marshy grasses of the bogland, adding texture and movement to the painted surface. The sky is a muted white, painted with short strokes, in varying directions, giving the impression of an overcast day, light just breaking through the clouds. The beautiful, mirrored surface of the pool in the centre of the composition reflects the expansive cloud filled sky above, a picture within picture. The curving mounds of turf stacks are repeated and magnified in the shapes of the mountains behind, creating a gentle rhythm within the painting in which the landscape elements speak, in a visual way at least, in complete harmony with one another. Niamh Corcoran, August 2024
