Lot 88: William John Hennessy (1839-1917) The Shrimpers

William John Hennessy (1839-1917) The Shrimpers (1886) Oil on canvas, 61 x 123cm (24 x 48½'') Signed and dated 1886 lower left William John Hennessy's early life was marked by the dramatic events of mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. Born in 1839 at Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, Hennessy and his mother and a brother, followed his father into exile when he was only ten years old. His father, John Hennessy, a participant of the Young Ireland uprising, had fled the country a year earlier, in 1848, arriving in Canada and then settling in New York. Hennessy's formative years were thus spent in New York and he was educated at the National Academy of Design, where he enrolled at the age of fifteen. In 1861 he was elected as an associate at the same institution and became an academician two years later, in 1863. Amidst his flourishing recognition and firm establishment as one of the leading Pre-Raphaelites working in America, Hennessy returned to the British Isles. Already renowned as an extraordinarily successful painter, illustrator and honorary member of American Society of Painters in Watercolour, he moved to London where he became a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, showing his works at the Royal Academy (1871-82), at the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. His genre scenes in particular became immensely popular, demonstrating his development of Victorian aesthetics, the play of the painting's intrigue, its narrative and the title, to a sophisticated perfection. His luminous, exquisitely colourful landscapes were also strongly admired amongst his contemporaries and Hennessy was considered a virtuoso in depiction of skies. Like his Irish contemporaries Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir John Lavery. Hennessy travelled frequently on the Continent. France became one of his favourite destinations and in particular, the landscapes of Normandy where he spent summers at the picturesque port of Honfleur and around the Calvados region, painting some of his most important, iconic genre scenes such as ''Fete Day in a Cider Orchard'' (Coll. Ulster Museum Belfast). His fresh rustic subject matter and handling of works painted in the area bear similarities to the Barbizon school and are also comparable to the works of Frank O'Meara and Egerton Coghill. In 1886, Hennessy moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he lived until 1893 and some sources record him studying in Paris before 1900 and exhibiting at the Paris Exposition in 1903 including works such as ''Waiting for the Boats - Coast of Calvados''; ''Feeding Pigeons - Mareil, Marly'' (1901) and ''A sketch of Bordighera, Italy''. In 1893 Hennessy returned to Britain, settling in Sussex. Towards the end of his life he paid tribute to his Irish roots and identity by showing mostly at exhibitions dedicated to Irish art - an exhibition of Irish painters organised by Hugh lane at London's Guildhall in 1904, at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 1906 and at Irish International Exhibition in Dublin in 1907.