Artist Paul Henry State Papers: Echoes of the past from the archives
To lose one of Ireland’s leaders, albeit, in symbolic form is an odd thing to do. But Dáil Éireann managed it.
On June 22, 1987 Tom Ryan RHA, then the distinguished president of that academy, rang the Taoiseach’s department in Mr Hughes’s second term as leader. He said he was in search of a portrait of Arthur Griffith by Paul Henry.
Paul Henry was one of the few Irish artists whose work was familiar to nearly everyone. He had passed away in 1958, was well remembered and highly regarded. His paintings were of increasing value. Ryan explained that this was one of those painted at the time of the Treaty, but he was unable to trace it though it appeared to be an official portrait.
Location
Ryan thought that it must be somewhere about the Dáil or other government building.
Records showed that in 1957 it was located in the room of the Ceann Comhairle. But its location by 1987 was unknown. At that date it might have been valued at perhaps £25,000 plus.
The OPW was next to be contacted by Commandant O’Donoghue, the superintendent of the Houses of the Oireachtas, who said he had had a search carried out which had failed to find it.
It was he who suggested the Office of Public Works, then headed by Noel de Chenu, might help.
But by October of 1987, when the file closed, it had still not been found.
It is amazing that a large painting by a famous artist of one of the most important figures in the revolutionary period, and whose death had thrown the country into mourning during the Civil War in August 1922, followed as it was soon after by the killing of Michael Collins on August 22.
There is nothing in the files to say whether this valuable historical record was ever recovered.
[National Archives file 2018/69/3]
