Among the artists who continued to uphold the tradition of landscape painting in the 20th century, one of the most faithful was James Humbert Craig. It is surprising to learn, therefore, that he was born in 1877 in Belfast, where his father was a wholesale tea merchant.
Furthermore, the young Craig emigrated to New York but returned to Ireland after a relatively short time since he missed the familiar sights of home. Craig was essentially an auto-didact, having spent less than a term at Belfast's College of Art. His particular interest was landscape, especially the Glens of Antrim and Connemara, and he returned to the same locations time and again for fresh inspiration; he kept a studio at Cushendun, even though he continued to live in Belfast. Having shown work for the first time at the Royal Hibernian Academy, he continued to be an exhibitor there every year thereafter until his death in 1944, becoming a member of the institution in 1928. He was also an academician of the Ulster Academy of Arts. Like Paul Henry, he enjoyed considerable commercial success throughout his career.
In style, it is fellow Ulsterman, Frank McKelvey, rather than Henry who most closely resembles Craig. In his dictionary of 20th-century Irish artists, Theo Snoddy quotes a 1923 article in The Studio, which observes: "In the North, the best men are, almost without exception, engrossed in landscape . . . Their landscapes, though by no means emotional, are always most sincere, closely observed, firmly and cleanly handled".
All of this is certainly true of James Humbert Craig, who, while not overtly emotional, still revealed a passionate devotion to the Irish countryside through his art. Like so many other artists here, he usually gave as much space on his canvas to the sky as to the landscape proper, so that lowering clouds hang over the upper section of his pictures.
The mountains he so often painted were defined in distinctive blocks of light and shade, so that they become massive forms on the horizon. His colouring is often muddy, relieved by outbursts of fresh yellow and green.
Craig was not an adventurous painter; like many of his contemporaries in Ireland, he revealed no evidence of any interest in the modernist movement then sweeping through the rest of Europe. His choice of genre indicates an inherent conservatism, but this is not to say that his work is ever dull. On the contrary, his technical skill gives these pictures a definite authority. This is why they have never fallen from vogue, although it is only in the last year or so that Craig has regained much of the popularity he enjoyed in the late 1980s.
On Monday, two typical examples of his style - one showing Cushendun, Co Antrim, the other Maam Cross, Connemara - come up for sale at the Ashbourne House Hotel in Cork, where they will be auctioned by Morgan O'Driscoll with estimates of £12,000-£15,000 and £8,000-£12,000 respectively. Other items in this sale include a pastel drawing by Sean Keating, along with a large quantity of 18th- and 19th-century furniture, some of it Irish.
The sale starts at 7 p.m.
