Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 21st October 2019

76 53 Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) The Black Swan signed lower right and titled verso oil on canvas 61 x 76.5cm (24 x 30in) Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin (label verso); Private Collection €20,000-30,000 (£17,699-26,548) 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 commitment 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 ‘The Black Swan’ on Mulroy Bay, she flattens the perspective and builds her composition from rhythmic curvilinear forms and crisply defined patterns. Aidan Dunne, September 2019

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