[Paul Henry, Irish artist.] Autograph Letter Signed to the painter and writer Walter Riddall, describing in evocative terms 'this great country - the west of Ireland', and his view of its effect on the arts of painting, music and poetry.

3pp., 4to. On aged and worn paper (text entirely intact). In a letter deeply evocative of the Irish cultural renaissance, Henry begins on the subject of a piece of his writing on a political meeting of Irish nationalist Joseph Devlin: 'Dear Walter | I am sending you by this post another effort. You had no idea what you were letting yourself in for when you told me to "sling along anything I had got"! This is a little impression of a meeting of Devlins & was held in Sept. So I suppose it would be good to print it now. Altho' a thing like this would I believe go in America. However if there is anything in it perhaps Joe Devlins name could be left out & just call him "a distinguished Irishman" or some such rot.' He is worried by certain phrases that he might have been 'quite unconsciously plagiarising. At any rate you or Lynd will know [...] I often think that you cannot do justice to this great country - the west of Ireland - except in words & music. God knows I wish I had the gift of one or other as the place is inspired & inspiring. Paint does not seem to touch the heart of the stuff in the same way. I wonder if this is why there has never been a really big Irish painter? I certainly feel more at home with a lump of charcoal as a brush in my clumsy incompetant hands would be rebellious things to work with - but words & music are the thing here. What Lynd means by sticking in London I do not know. The stuff here is much finer than even he imagines - He has only dashed through the country.' He declares himself 'so enamoured of this place' that he does not think he will ever leave. He continues in the same vein, concluding with a paragraph about 'our show in Belfast'. From the Lynd family archive, and with note at foot of last page by the daughter of Robert and Sylvia Lynd, Maire Gaster, noting that Riddall's papers 'must have passed to R.L. after his death from T.B. Or he may have passed this to R.L.'