Harry Kernoff

Irish painter and woodcutter Harry Aaron Kernoff was of Russian-Jewish descent. He served his apprenticeship at his father’s cabinet maker’s. Thanks to a scholarship he was awarded in 1923, he was able to study at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Arts and travel through Europe. In 1926, he commenced exhibiting in the Royal Hibernian Academy, which he did annually until 1974, and he later becomes a full member of the Academy. Except for his early years as an artist, he rejected abstraction in favor of realism, developing his style into an Irish Modernism.

Kernoff mainly depicted street and pub scenes from Dublin, with sympathy and understanding, and became one of the leading painters in Irish modernism. Kernoff also painted typical Irish landscapes and portraits of members of Dublin’s literature and theater scene. During the 1930s he visited the Soviet Union and was influenced by the Russian painters belonging to the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia such as Yevgeny Katzman, Isaak Brodsky, Yury Repin, Aleksandr Grigoriyev, Pavel Radimov. In addition to oil paintings and water colors, Kernoff’s works included drawings, wood prints, book illustrations and even designs of stage settings and costumes.

Kernoff’s Boxer was a chalk and wash drawing (68.5 x 48.5 cm) from 1924. Because the Hammer Thrower is listed as a painting in the art catalog, his woodcut Man with Hammer can be eliminated from the list of candidates.