Norah McGuinness (1901-1980) The Nuns Cove (1944)

Norah McGuinness (1901-1980) The Nuns Cove (1944) Oil on canvas, 64 x 76cm (25x30") Signed Exhibited: Irish Exhibition of Living Art 1951, Cat. No. 60 costing 50.0.0, "Norah McGuinness Exhibition of Paintings in oil on Gouache 1935-61" Exhibition March-April 1979 The Taylor Gallery Dublin Cat. No. 3. Original Exhibition label verso Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) The Nuns' Cove Painted in 1944. Exhibited Irish Exhibition of Living Art 1951, Taylor Galleries, 1979. Painted in 1944, the year Norah was elected president of The Irish Exhibition of Living Art, The Nuns' Cove was exhibited there in 1951. Confidence and fun burst from the canvas. As the Dublin Magazine critic said of her work in 1949, 'At its best the work of Norah McGuinness is forthright, spontaneous and dramatic.' Two years earlier, on the occasion of her first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, The Studio speaks of 'courage, coupled with hidden knowledge, a looseness of technique completely free of sloppiness and a richness of colour unusual in its mature balance'. A woman of the world, well-travelled and an habitué of bohemian London during the 1920s and 30s, Norah was no mealy-mouthed Sunday painter. Just as Nano Reid in depicting Mellifont Abbey would show her disapproval by artfully inscribing her signature along a serpent, maybe Norah is here playfully juxtaposing the absurdity of the enclosure of young women behind convent walls and their obvious enjoyment of the wonders of nature. There may be an element of punning here also. Regarded as something of a 'scarlet woman' after her divorce from the poet Geoffrey Phibbs, Norah, at the insistence of the Lord Mayor's wife, was refused an invitation to view her own exhibition at Londonderry City Hall. It is said that she never set foot in her native city thereafter. To be close to her roots she bought a cottage in Donegal and regarded that county as her own. There is a Nun's Cove in Donegal Bay, which may well be the inspiration for this painting. The painting is composed rather like a mediaeval painting, a Book of Hours; the nuns are almost synchronic figures, similar but separate. The sense of movement, both of the wild elemental forces and the nuns coming to witness said forces, is striking. Norah's signature colours, her blues and oranges are here but it is her use of white which dominates the piece pulling together all the elements. One is reminded of George Campbell's advice for watercolourists, that the secret is to know when to leave the paper white. All the drama, all the life in this painting is highlighted in white. A designer of stage-sets from the early 1920s, Norah is here setting a stage for both nuns and nature.