Unpublished Paul Henry Painting Emerges for Sale

1st December 2025

An unpublished painting by one of the most influential Irish landscape artists comes to light from family collection.

"Achill called to me as no other place had ever done." Paul Henry.

This moody and evocative painting by Paul Henry (Irish 1876-1958), ‘An Achill Bog at Blacksod Bay’ (Lot 535) was likely executed toward the latter stages of the artist’s initial ten year stay on Achill Island off Ireland’s wild, Atlantic west coast. Henry first visited the island with his new wife, Scottish artist, Grace, on holiday in 1910. Legend has it that he ripped up their return train tickets, determining never to leave, much to his wife’s horror.

Born in Belfast, Henry studied art at the Belfast School of Art before going to Paris in 1898 to study at the Académie Julian and at the Académie Carmen under American artist James Abbot McNeill Whistler’s (1834 – 1903) tutelage.

In Paris, Henry was exposed to the work of impressionists and post-impressionists; Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Monet, as well as the paintings of Jean-François Millet (1814 – 1875) whose grand depictions of peasant farmers carrying out everyday tasks formed part of the Realism movement. Under Whistler, Henry developed an ability to work masterfully in charcoal, break up complex shapes into clear communicative forms and work in close tonal shades.

From around 1900, Henry was working as an illustrator in London for magazines and advertisements but during that first fateful holiday in Achill he was seduced by the wild, west coast landscape with high mountain ranges, immense sea cliffs, ancient bog lands, ephemeral light and changeable weather of the region. He was also deeply moved by the harshness of life on Achill Island, both in terms of the living conditions and the hardness of the economic life. Early in this period, Henry painted rural workers farming the land cutting turf to heat their homes, and fishing, placing his subjects at the centre of his canvases, much the way that Millet had. These works were exhibited alongside works by his wife, Grace Henry, in Belfast in 1911 and Dublin in 1912.

Later, Henry’s focus was to move to purely landscape painting where his efficiency of form and use of tonal shades were to became a sort of pictorial shorthand for Ireland itself when adopted by the Irish Tourism Board, cementing the popular vision of the idyllic ‘emerald isle’ to this day.

‘An Achill Bog at Blacksod Bay’ brilliantly captures a fleeting moment, with two thirds of the canvas given over to heavy rain clouds ready to break over a snaking waterway, past monumental peat piles and out to the sea beyond.

This previously unpublished work appears as lot 535 in our upcoming Modern British & 20^th Century Art sale on 11^th December, having been in the family of the present owner for three generations. Lot 535 carries a pre-sale estimate of £20,000 - £30,000 (before auction fees).

Henry’s works can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ulster Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.