KERNOFF, Harry. Woodcut Portrait of James Joyce. Signed by the artist. Single leaf, 193 x 250cm.

Circa 1950. In very good condition. Rare James Joyce woodcut.

Harry Kernoff (1900-1974), artist, was born in London, son of a Russian father and Spanish mother. In 1914 the family moved to Dublin, where he studied at the Metropolitan School of Art and won the Taylor Scholarship in 1923. He began his working life as a woodworker in his father’s furniture business, and this led him to the production of woodcuts. During his career of more than fifty years he painted most of the literary figures of Dublin, including Joyce and Yeats, and many of the people of Dun Chaoin and the Blasket Islands. Three collections of his woodcuts were published in
limited editions.
Actively involved with literary and theatre figures, he was a member of the Radical Club and the Studio Art Club, and at his studio (in Stamer St., Dublin) painted a remarkable range of portraits of leading Dublin figures including W. B. Yeats, Flann O’Brien, Sean O’Casey, Hilton Edwards, F. R. Higgins, Brendan Behan, and James Joyce. A strong independence of style marked his work, reflected in his one-man exhibitions held in Dublin yearly between 1926 and 1958.

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