Large Irish Watercolor Snow on the Bog by Rev JH Flack

About the Item

Presenting a fabulous late 20th century piece of original Irish Art by the Late Reverend J.H. Flack of Athy, Co. Kildare, a renowned, listed, exhibited and respected Irish watercolorist. circa 2000. “Snow on the Bog” – depicts a winter scene in the Irish Midlands, famous for the largest Bog in Europe, The Bog of Allen. Framed, matted and under glass. The painting is signed but the signature is just under the matte. It beautifully captures a blanket of snow over the wet flat and sparsely vegetated boglands, with the reeds and rushes protruding from the snow and the bog holes still visible in the blanket of snow. It has a beautiful blurriness to it, the more you look at it the more you get captivated by the serenity and white haze !! Perfect for Texas summers: feel yourself cool down just looking at it !!!!! James H. Flack (1941 – 2018) was a contemporary Irish watercolour painter. He was born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1941 and settled in Athy, County Kildare in the early 1970s. He is a member of the Water Colour Society of Ireland, the Ulster Watercolour Society, the Dublin Art Club and the Dublin Sketching Club. He holds the degrees of BA, BD, M.Th., and H.Dip.Ed. from Trinity College Dublin and Edinburgh University. Flack’s interest in painting developed at an early age when his mother, headmistress of the local primary school, encouraged her pupils to use art work throughout the school curriculum. At the age of ten his paintings were chosen for display in a children’s exhibition that was a feature of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Flack initially trained for a career in the Presbyterian ministry but instead chose to pursue painting. His works have been selected and hung for many years in the Oireachtas and in the Royal Hibernian Academy. He has regular one-man exhibitions in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Belfast as well as one-man exhibitions in Wexford during the Wexford Festival Operaand in Kilkenny during Arts Week.[4] He has also had an exhibition of his work in the Canadian cities of London, Ontario, Montreal and Winnipeg as well as in San Antonio, Texas in the United States.[4] In 2000, the Athy Urban District Council presented Flack with an award for “outstanding achievement in the arts”.[6] Flack has also received the O’Sullivan Graphic Award at the Watercolour Society of Ireland’s Annual Exhibition 1999 for a work of particular distinction, and the Amanace Consultants awards at the Waterecolour Society of Irelands Annual Exhibition 2002.[2] He is married to Marlynne Flack and has one son, Stephen Hall Flack. Flack’s paintings have been purchased by public institutions including Irish banks, business companies, public libraries and by private collectors at home and abroad.[4] While his subject interests are wide-ranging, his favourite themes are landscapes and seascapes with the emphasis on details of nature. He also gives watercolour painting courses to summer schools, art groups and private individuals each year throughout Ireland and Wales. James Hall Flack passed away in 2018. The Bog of Allen: The Bog of Allen (Móin Alúine in Irish) is a large raised bog in the centre of Ireland between the rivers Liffey and Shannon. The bog’s 958 square kilometers (370 square miles) stretch into County Offaly, County Meath, County Kildare, County Laois, and County Westmeath.[1] Peat is mechanically harvested on a large scale by Bórd na Móna,[citation needed] the government-owned peat production industry. The area has miles of narrow gauge Industrial railways for transporting turf to processing plants and turf powered power plants. In addition, the cutover portions are used as area for grazing. The bog is crossed by the Grand Canal and the Royal Canal. The peatlands of the Bog of Allen contain a valuable part of the archaeological record.[3] Due to the special preservation conditions within peat, many kinds of artefact which do not normally survive are preserved; these include for instance wooden structures and objects. In many parts of the Bog of Allen Industrial milling has uncovered archaeological remains[4] such as trackways. These trackways are wooden walkways constructed through prehistory and into the medieval period which allowed people and animals to cross the extensive areas of peatland, which can give us an insight into the economy and way of life of the societies that existed around the bog. The preservation conditions in bogs also preserve a range of palaeoenvironmental evidence such as pollen and plant macrofossils which are often studied alongside the archaeological evidence to inform about the environment on and around the bog.

Dimensions:

Height: 25 in (63.5 cm)Width: 34 in (86.36 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)

Style:

Country (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Paper,Hand-Painted

Place of Origin:

Ireland, Republic of

Period:

20th Century

Date of Manufacture:

2000