Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901 - 1980) Waterweeds Oil on canvas, 122 x 91.5cm (48 x 35¾) Signed; inscribed with title and dated 1968 verso Though this Norah McGuinness painting is clearly of water, weeds and three ducks, its brilliance belongs to its handling of colour and its structure and composition which includes abstract as well as representational qualities. In Waterweeds, the subject matter is familiar but there is nothing everyday about this stunningly beautiful work. Dated, verso, 1968, McGuinness painted this when she was sixty-seven. Her palette frequently features blues and greens and browns, her subject matter favoured landscape, shorelines, bogland and in well-known works such as her early 1930’s painting, The Thames, browns predominate, Garden Green, dated 1962, celebrates several shades of green and Flight, also from 1962, contains different and harmonious blues. Waterweeds not only combines all three of these strong colours but, unusual for McGuinness, the chosen shape here is portrait not landscape and the focus is close-up. Many of McGuinness’s shorescape and landscapes are broad in scope and are bright, light-filled works. This painting has a unique atmosphere and depth. At the centre of the painting, a pair of ducks, behind them a solitary one. They could be, they look like, common male scooter ducks with their black plumage but McGuinness is more interested in capturing their quiet lives rather than offering an ornithological study. Using blocks of colour the water is patterned and the decorative ovoid-like shapes in dark purplebrown and pale green on the water could represent nesting spots. Her strong lines and bold colours resemble stained glass. The varying and speckled tall, strong, green weeds on the right, asymmetrical and striking, add a luxuriantly lush detail. They reach upwards and McGuinness paints some stalks reaching beyond the edge of the painting. Their powerful presence gives the painting its title. The varying brown shape that dominates the top third of Waterweeds could be a stylised shoreline with small pools of water reflecting the sky Clearly non-representational, what matters is its striking effect, contrasting as it does with the expanse of blue water and those touches of white pick up on the whites in the floating stylised shape lower down as does the use of white at the very top of the painting. This aspect of Waterweeds, with its irregular blue shapes and patches of white and the bold lines, give the painting an abstract quality. At the very top of the canvas the light grey suggests something beyond. Though every detail is not always recognisable in this Cubist influenced work, this does not prevent the work from being a magnificent mood piece. Cubism allows for different perspectives and what McGuinnes achieves here is in keeping with McGuinness’s view that ‘Cubism gets rids of things that are not essential. It is a great simplifying aid and I think in that way its influence is apparent in my work as part of an overall simplification process’ [quoted by Karen E. Brown in her essay ‘Norah McGuinness, W.B. Yeats and the Illustrated Book’] Born in Derry in 1901, McGuinness, against her family’s wishes, chose art and, aged eighteen, attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where she studied under Patrick Tuohy, Oswald Reeves and Harry Clarke and, later, with André Lhote in Paris. In 1923 she was awarded an RDS gold medal and exhibited for the first time at the RHA in 1924. She lived in London and New York – her paintings New York Skyline and East River date from that time – and when she returned to Dublin, in 1937, she worked as a book illustrator, illustrating books by, among others, Laurence Sterne, W.B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen and Maria Edgeworth. McGuinness also worked for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and inspired by Salvador Dali, who did a window design for Bonwit Telller on Fifth Avenue, she got herself a job designing and dressing New York windows. On returning to Dublin McGuinness decorated Brown Thomas windows for over twenty years. She also designed theatre sets and costumes for Abbey and Peacock productions. In 1950 she and Nano Reid represented Ireland, when Ireland participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time. Her work is held in many important collections including The National Gallery of Ireland, IMMA, the Hugh Lane, the Ulster Museum and the Crawford Gallery. Niall MacMonagle, August 2022