Paul Henry

Paul Henry (Belfast, 1876 – Bray, 1958) was an Irish painter known chiefly for his landscapes of the west of Ireland, painted in a spare style rooted in Post-Impressionism. His work helped shape the popular image of that region in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was Ireland's most renowned artist.

Born in Belfast to a Baptist minister, he studied at the Belfast School of Art before going to Paris in 1898, where he attended the Académie Julian and Whistler's Académie Carmen. He married the painter Grace Henry in 1903. After returning to Ireland in 1910, he lived on Achill Island until 1919, learning to capture the particular interplay of light and landscape of the western coast.

In 1919 he moved to Dublin, and in 1920 he was one of the founders of the Society of Dublin Painters. He also designed several railway posters, some of which, notably Connemara Landscape, sold very well. He separated from his first wife in 1929 and later married Mabel Young.

His technique changed little after he left Achill, and his range was limited, but he produced a substantial body of images that remain widely familiar. His red-green colour blindness affected his use of colour. He lost his sight in 1945 and did not regain it before his death.

His legacy is reflected in the exhibitions held in his memory at Trinity College Dublin in 1973 and at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2004, and in a memorial plaque unveiled in Belfast in 2004. In 2006, his painting Dooega, featured on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, sold for £150,000 at a Bonhams and James Adams sale.