Lot 56: Henry Allan RHA (1856 - 1912) The Rag Pickers

Henry Allan RHA (1856 - 1912) The Rag Pickers (1900) Oil on canvas, 66 x 101.5cm (26.5 x 40'') Signed Provenance: Previously in the collection of the artist Joseph Malachy Kavanagh; Purchased by the current owner circa 1974. Exhibited: 1900 RHA Annual exhibition Cat. No. 13; 1975 Crawford Gallery,Cork ROSC Chorcai ''Irish Art 1900 - 1950'' Cat. No. 1; 1977 Wexford Arts Centre ''Irish Art from Private Collections 1870 - 1930'' Cat. No. 1; 2006 Crawford Gallery,Cork ''Whipping the Herring'' Exhibition; ''Ireland: Her People and Landscape'' The AVA Gallery, June - Sept 2012, Cat. No. 1 Literature: Irish Art 1900-1950, ROSC 1976, p17 ''Irelands Painters 1600 - 1940'' by Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin 2002 P266 (Fig 364) ''One Hundred Years of Irish Art - A Millennium Presentation'' by Eamonn Mallie P58 Full page illustration P59 ''Ireland: Her People and Landscape'' Exhibition Catalogue, full page illustration p8 Born in Dundalk in 1856, Henry Allan studied art in Belfast and Dublin before enrolling at the age of eighteen in the Academie Royaume in Antwerp, where Vincent van Gogh had briefly been a student. In the late nineteenth century an artist's education was not considered complete if they had not spent time studying in Paris or Belgium. Most artists chose Paris, but many Irish artists favoured Antwerp, at least before moving on to Paris. Belgium was considered a safer country for young students, and the style of paintings taught at the Academie Royaume was less radical than the Impressionism then coming into vogue in Paris. In Antwerp, Allan shared lodging with fellow Irish students Richard Nounan and Edwin Hill. He won a number of prizes for drawing and paintings, and returned to Ireland in 1990, showing that year for the first time at Royal Hibernian Academy - a work entitled ''Country Road Near Antwerp''. After living in Downpatrick for a year or so Allan moved to Dublin, where he won the Royal Dublin Society's Taylor Prize. In addition to painting mainly Victorian genre subjects such as beggars, rag-pickers, flower and match-sellers, Allan painted landscapes around counties Down and Dublin. In this painting, two women ply their meagre trade in Ringsend, a windswept coastal area close to Dublin city. The term rag-pickers used to describe those who sort through general domestic waste to identify anything that is recyclable or saleable. The theme was popular with artists who depicted the harsher side of urban life, such as Daumier in France and the Finnish painter Eero Jarneefelt. In 1900, when this painting was shown at the Royal Hibernian Academy, rag-picking would have been an extremely marginal occupation, as most households would ever, cotton rags had some value as they were used in the making of expensive hand-made paper, and so the two woman may be collecting rags to be used at Rathfarnham paper mills, or at Clondalkin, where Thomas Sears had established his factory in 1837. There was also a paper mill in Dublin city itself, at Kilmainham. One of the women turns to her companion while pointing to another group of rag-pickers in the distance, perhaps complaining that their 'patch' had been invaded. Peter Murray