Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 29th April 2019

78 60 Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) Flight Over Mulroy signed lower right oil on canvas 51 x 76.5cm (20 x 30in) Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin (label verso); Whyte’s Dublin 27th April 2004, Lot 18; James Adam’s, Dublin 1st October 2014, Lot 89; Private Collection Exhibited: Irish Women Artists 1870-1970; Summer Loan Show 7th July-5th September 2014, Adam’s, AVA Gallery €20,000-€30,000 ($22,471-$33,707) (£16,949-£25,423) Norah McGuinness is a central figure in the history of 20th century Irish art, and a pioneering feminist exemplar. Born in Derry, she moved to Dublin when she won a three-year scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. There, Harry Clarke, one of her tutors, recognised her talent and encouraged her to explore illustration, which she did to great acclaim. But studying in London, her enthusiasm for French Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism confirmed her com- mitment to painting. Though her family was prosperous, disapproval of her chosen path meant that she had to be financially self-sufficient from early on. Illustration and related pursuits - later she was a set designer for the Abbey and the Peacock (she loved theatre), and for many years she designed the window displays for Brown Thomas - remained vital to her livelihood. Though, like several Irish artists, she studied in Paris with André Lhote, she did not become one of “Lhote’s daughters,” instead making her own style from what she absorbed. That style is strongly graphic and linear, distilling a great deal of information in a compact pictorial statement and based on close observation from nature. She was an immensely social person and a keen traveller, and a founder of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. Birds - symbolic of freedom and possibility, perhaps - are frequent subjects. In her lyrical evocation of a gull flying over Mulroy Bay, she flattens the perspective and builds her composition from rhythmic curvilinear forms and crisply defined patterns. While her landscapes outnumber her urban studies, she did paint many Dublin subjects. Her view of Smithfield looking south is tremendously economic in its statement but packed with visual information. Aidan Dunne, March 2019