seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Post-Impressionism


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Death of Olive Henry, Northern Irish Artist

Olive Henry, Northern Irish artist known for her painting, photography and stained glass design, dies on November 8, 1989, in Crawfordsburn, County Down, Northern Ireland. She is a founding member of the Ulster Society of Women Artists and is believed to be the only female stained glass artist working in Northern Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century.

Henry is born in Belfast on January 15, 1902, the daughter of the tea merchant George Adams Henry. She attends Mount Pottinger National School, and Victoria College, before expanding her studies at night classes at the Belfast School of Art.

Henry completes an apprenticeship at Clokey Stained Glass Studios founded by Walter Francis Clokey where she is to work for over fifty years designing stained glass windows. Her appointment in the autumn of 1919 comes by a chance visit to Victoria College by the firm’s owner who is seeking a suitable apprentice. She retires from the firm at Easter 1972.

In addition to her stained glass work, Henry exhibits her paintings widely in the Oireachtas, Belfast Art Society, Royal Ulster Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy, the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Water Colour Society of Ireland, Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (now the Ulster Museum) and the National Society in London. She is a founding member, with Gladys Maccabe, of the Ulster Society of Women Artists and is president of the society from 1979 to 1981.

Henry exhibits at the Belfast Art Society for the first time in 1928. She exhibits four works, all landscapes in oil, and then a further two works in the following year. In 1931, she shows a further two works with the successor to the Belfast Art Society, the Ulster Academy of Arts. In 1932, she shows A Derbyshire Village, described by one critic as “a delightful English rural scene.” Between 1931 and 1942 she shows with more than twenty paintings at the Ulster Academy of Arts, exhibiting at each annual show in that time.

Henry has a keen interest in photography from an early age and wins various awards for her photographs. In 1934, she wins the August prize from the Photographic Dealers’ Association for a shot of a child playing with toys in the bath, having received a consolation prize of five shillings in September of the previous year for a shot of a traditional market scene in Boulogne. She goes on to write a regular column for Amateur Photographer throughout the 1930s.

In January 1935, Henry is appointed leader of a local sketching group by the Youth Hostel Association. In December 1935, she is commended for a sketch called River Pool, submitted to a competition judged by James Humbert Craig on behalf of the Youth Hostel Association, presented alongside Port Muckin a show with the sketching group. Maurice Canning Wilks contributes Skernaghan Point, Brown’s Bay to the same show.

The Robinson and Cleaver Art Gallery stages a display of works from Four Ulster Artists in 1936 consisting of paintings from Henry, her sister Marjorie, Theo Gracey and F. H. Hummel. She contributes Green Boat, which she had presented earlier in the year to the Ulster Academy of Arts, and includes Off the Scilly Isles among pictures from Brittany and Bavaria. The reviewer in Belfast’s News Letter refers to her style as “Post-Impressionism.”

In 1937, Henry is elected an Associate of the Ulster Academy of Arts and presents three watercolours to the institution the following year. The exhibition is opened by Oliver St. John Gogarty with participants such as John Luke, Maurice Wilks, James Humbert Craig, Rosamund Praeger and Colin Middleton, who shows three Surrealist works including Angelus.

The Royal Hibernian Academy displays two small works, Flight, 1941 and Lakeside, among an unusually large contingent of Ulster artists in the annual exhibition in the spring of 1942. The Ulster Academy of Arts is united in their commitment to raise funds for the bomb damaged Ulster Hospital for Children and Women in their Spring Exhibition of 1942. Henry displays a sense of humour in her use of black-out paint, roadblocks and air raid shelters in one of the watercolours on show.

Henry is a regular exhibitor with the Water Colour Society of Ireland, and contributes more than one hundred works to their exhibitions between 1943 and 1986.

Henry joins Violet McAdoo in a joint exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1944. McAdoo presents with watercolours, however, Henry also presents oils. The paintings are primarily of landscapes but included a number urban scenes.

In 1945, Henry and her sister Margaret join Arthur and George Campbell, Colin Middleton, Gladys and Max Maccabe, Thomas Carr, Maurice Wilks, James McIntyre and others, in the only official exhibition from the Ulster branch of the Artists’ International Association sponsored by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (NI) at the Belfast Museum.

The MacGaffin Gallery at Pottinger’s Entry is the venue for a group exhibition of experimental and modernist works with Nevill Johnson, Aaron McAfee and the MacCabes in 1946, where Henry exhibits seven paintings. Quayside is one of three pictures that she presents at the Ulster Academy in 1946. She also shows it with the Water Colour Society of Ireland in the following year and at CEMA’s Some Ulster Paintings exhibition in that same year.

In 1946, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and Art (CEMA) purchases a painting by Henry, in addition to works by other contemporary Ulster artists. Twenty-four of the works from the CEMA collection, including her painting, are later presented at their Donegall Place gallery in 1954.

Henry debuts at the 1948 Irish Exhibition of Living Art with one painting and returns in each of the subsequent ten years with a total of 20 paintings. She is also elected as an Honorary Academician of the Ulster Academy of Arts in 1948.

Henry displays one work, Harbour, Northern Ireland, with Violet McAdoo at the 88th exhibition of the Society of Women Artists at the Royal Institute Galleries in London during the summer of 1949. Just a few months later her work is back in London for the United Society of Artists annual exhibition where she shows Gossip and Shell and Sail.

Henry is awarded a travel scholarship from the Soroptomists of Belgium in 1957, which enables her to study stained glass in the country. She is the President of Soroptomist Club of Belfast from 1960 to 1961, where she had been a member since its foundation in 1932.

Upon her return from Belgium, CEMA stages a solo exhibition with thirty-five of Henry’s oils and watercolours at their Belfast gallery. The exhibition is arranged at short notice when another is unexpectedly cancelled. Writer Nesca Robb opens the exhibition where it is claimed a new painting technique, “monopainting,” is revealed, described as paint drawn through a gauze over glass. The exhibition includes a ‘Breton’ series, Kerry Tangle, Ship Pattern, Barrack Shapes, Lough Shapes, and Backs. In addition, she displays In the Park, an oil previously seen at the Royal Ulster Academy in 1955 and at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1956, and a second oil, City Lunch Hour, exhibited at the Royal Ulster Academy in 1956.

The Ulster Society of Women Artists is founded in 1957 by Gladys Maccabe with the support of Henry and a number of others at a time when no arts societies are accepting female artists into their ranks. The main objective is to ensure the development of quality art and women artists in Ulster. The organisation begins with ten invited artists. Henry exhibits with the society throughout her life.

Henry receives a mention in the local press referring to her exhibits in the Royal Ulster Academy show of 1959 with Kenneth Jamison comparing her work with that of Deborah Brown, “Olive Henry is more decadent by instinct, a fine formaliser. Her pictures Man and Ropes and Riviera Port, well defined and carefully abstracted, contrast in form with Deborah Brown’s freer Oil Over Tempra,[sic] 1959.”

A group exhibition in 1964 at the New Gallery in Belfast includes work from Henry alongside Neil Shawcross, Max Maccabe, Kathleen Bell, Richard Croft and Helen Ross. Among other works she shows Easter and Long Garden.

In 1965, Henry joins twelve Ulster artists including Alice Berger-Hammerschlag, Basil Blackshaw, Colin Middleton, Romeo Toogood, and Mercy Hunter in a diverse exhibition of landscape paintings at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland gallery. In the same year, she completes a commission from the Sullivan Association of Former Pupils to design a window for Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, County Down.

In 1981, the Ulster Society of Womens Artists elects Henry as President. A retrospective of her studio works is hosted by the Shambles Gallery in Hillsborough, County Down in 1986, some thirty years since her last solo exhibition. Henry shows at the Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition in 1987 for the last time.

Henry dies on November 8, 1989, at Crawfordsburn, County Down. Her paintings are held in the collections of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Ulster Museum, Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum, and the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts Diploma Collection.

(Pictured: “The Gardener,” watercolour by Olive Henry)


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Birth of Artist Paul Henry

Paul Henry, Irish artist noted for depicting the Connacht province landscape in the west of Ireland in a spare Post-Impressionist style, is born at 61 University Road, Belfast, on April 11, 1876.

Henry is the third of four sons of the Rev. Robert Mitchell Henry, minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and his wife Kate Ann Berry, eldest of four daughters of Thomas Berry, minister of the Baptist church, Athlone. His father becomes a Baptist in 1858 and pastor of Great Victoria Street Baptist Church, Belfast, resigning in 1875 to join the Plymouth Brethren.

Henry begins to draw in pencil and watercolours at the age of four, even before entering the kindergarten at Methodist College Belfast (MCB), in 1882 where he first begins drawing regularly. At the age of fifteen he moves to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He studies art at the Belfast School of Art before going to Paris in 1898 to study at the Académie Julian and at James McNeill Whistler‘s Académie Carmen.

Henry marries the painter Emily Grace Mitchell on September 17, 1903, in London at St Peter’s Anglican church, Bayswater. He returns to Ireland in 1910. From then until 1919 he lives on Achill Island, where he learns to capture the peculiar interplay of light and landscape specific to the west of Ireland. In 1919, he moves to Dublin and in 1920 he is one of the founders of the Society of Dublin Painters, originally a group of ten artists. He designs several railway posters, some of which, notably Connemara Landscape, achieves considerable sales. He separates from his wife in 1929. His second wife is the artist Mabel Young.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Henry is Ireland’s best-known artist, one who has a considerable influence on the popular image of the west of Ireland. Although he seems to cease experimenting with his technique after leaving Achill and his range is limited, he creates a large body of fine images whose familiarity is a testament to its influence.

Henry’s use of colour is affected by his red-green colour blindness. He loses his sight in 1945 and does not regain his vision before his death.

Henry dies on August 24, 1958, at his home at 1 Sidmonton Square, Bray, County Wicklow, and is buried at St. Patrick’s Church, Enniskerry, County Wicklow. He is survived by his wife, Mabel. His papers and sketchbooks are in the libraries of the National Gallery of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin.

A commemorative exhibition of Henry’s work is held at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1973 and the National Gallery of Ireland holds a major exhibition of his work in 2004.

A painting by Henry is featured on an episode of the BBC‘s Antiques Roadshow, broadcast on November 12, 2006. The painting is given a value of approximately £40,000–60,000 by the Roadshow. However, due to the buoyancy of the Irish art market at the time, it sells for €260,000 on December 5, 2006, in James Adams’ and Bonhams’ joint Important Irish Art sale.

Pictured: “Roadside Cottages, below Mweelrea Mountain” by Paul Henry, RHA, oil on panel, 1940)


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Birth of Neil Shawcross, Post-Impressionist Artist

Neil Shawcross MBE, RHA, HRUA, Post-Impressionist artist, is born in Kearsley, Lancashire, England, on March 15, 1940. He has been a resident of Northern Ireland since 1962.

Shawcross studies at Bolton College of Art from 1955 to 1958, and Lancaster College of Art from 1958 to 1960, before moving to Belfast in 1962 to take up a part-time lecturer’s post at the Belfast College of Art, becoming full-time in 1968. He continues to lecture there until his retirement in 2004.

Primarily a portrait painter, his subjects include Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, novelist Francis Stuart (for the Ulster Museum), former Lord Mayor of Belfast David Cook (for Belfast City Council), footballer Derek Dougan and fellow artists Colin Middleton and Terry Frost. He also paints the figure and still life, taking a self-consciously childlike approach to composition and colour. His work also include printmaking, and he has designed stained glass for the Ulster Museum and St. Colman’s Church, Lambeg, County Antrim.

Shawcross’s academic career includes a residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia in 1987, a residency at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont in 1991, and a visiting assistant professorship at Pennsylvania State University in 1993.

Shawcross has exhibited nationally, with one-man shows in London, Manchester, Dublin and Belfast, and internationally in Hong Kong and the United States, and his work is found in many private and corporate collections.

Shawcross is elected an Associate of the Royal Ulster Academy of Art in 1975, and is made a full Academician in 1977. He wins the Academy’s Conor Award in 1975, its gold medal in 1978, 1982, 1987, 1994, 1997 and 2001, and its James Adam Prize in 1998. He is also a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). He is awarded the Gallaher Portrait Prize in 1966.

Shawcross is conferred an honorary doctorate by Queen’s University Belfast in 2007. He is appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to arts in Northern Ireland.

In 2010, the Merrion Hotel, Dublin, hosts a private collection of the works of Shawcross. In 2015, he exhibits a collection of six foot tall book covers inspired by original Penguin paperbacks at the National Opera House in Wexford, County Wexford. In 2018, he donates to Belfast City Council a collection of 36 paintings dedicated to ‘Writers of Belfast’ in a show of appreciation to his adopted home city. A major retrospective of his works are exhibited at the F. E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio, Banbridge, County Down, in the same year.

Shawcross is a Patron of the charity YouthAction Northern Ireland. He lives in Hillsborough, County Down, Northern Ireland.


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Birth of Walter Frederick Osborne, Landscape & Portrait Painter

Walter Frederick Osborne, impressionist and Post-Impressionism landscape and portrait painter, is born in Rathmines, Dublin on June 17, 1859.

Most of Osborne’s paintings are figurative and focus on women, children, the elderly, the poor, and the day-to-day life of ordinary people on Dublin streets, as well as series of rural scenes. He also produces city-scapes, which he paints from both sketches and photographs. A prolific artist, he produces oils, watercolours, and numerous pencil sketches. He is best known for his documentary depictions of late 19th century working class life.

Osborne is the second of three sons of William Osborne, a successful animal painter who specialises in portraying horses and dogs for the then prosperous Irish landlords. He is educated at Rathmines School and at the Royal Hibernian Academy school. He learns from his father that there is money to be earned from painting animals. He produces quite a few, including of children with their pets, notably his 1885 A New Arrival, and a series of impressionistic works on cows.

Osborne wins the Taylor Prize in 1881 and 1882, the highest student honour in Ireland of the time, while studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He is influenced by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, and the French realist, plein-air painter, Jules Bastien-Lepage, as well as Berthe Morisot.

In 1883, Osborne moves from Antwerp to Brittany where he paints his famous Apple Gathering, Quimperlé, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Soon after, he moves to England where he works alongside Nathaniel Hill and Augustus Burke at Walberswick. During his period, he often returns to Dublin to make preparatory sketches for what becomes his most renowned series, of the everyday lives of the city’s poor. Although highly regarded today, these documentary street paintings are not commercially successful, and Osborne supplements his income through portrait paintings of the middle class, which are not as artistically satisfying.

In 1886, he is elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy and receives many commissions for portraits. This is an important source of income, as he has no private means of his own. After his sister dies, he is involved in looking after her daughter, and his own parents become increasingly financially dependent on him.

In 1892, he returns to Ireland to live in the family residence, and he also keeps a studio at No. 7 St. Stephen’s Green. He spends a considerable amount of time painting outdoors, in Dublin around St. Patrick’s Cathedral or in the country. He is well liked in social circles and counts the surgeon Sir Thornely Stoker, brother of Bram Stoker, among his best friends.

Osborne’s mother becomes ill in the early 1900s, and Walter spends significant periods caring for her. In 1903, while gardening, he overheats himself and catches a chill, which he neglects, and which develops into pneumonia. He dies prematurely from the illness at the age of 43 on April 24, 1903. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

Some critics have suggested that at the time of his death he is on the brink of his artistic maturity. His final work Tea in the Garden, a fusion of naturalism and impressionism, remains unfinished at his death and is now in the collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Today his work is highly sought after by collectors.