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Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980)
Flight (1962)
Oil on canvas, 71 x 50cm (28 x 19½”)
Signed and dated ‘62
Exhibited: The Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition 1962, Cat. No. 138,
where purchased
Its strong sense of design and its consciously modern treatment of the subject makes
Flight
, a distinctively Norah McGuinness painting. It suggests a late autumnal scene,
with dark silhouettes of trees against an expanse of air, filled with the black forms of
departing birds.The sky, an abstract study of the colour blue in all its tones, forms a
vivid backdrop to the stark black structure of the branches and the diagonal sweep of
the birds in flight.The cool tones of the upper part of the composition are contrasted
by the warm greens, reds and yellows of the ground in the lower left foreground and
in the cascading red shapes that emerge from the branches of the trees, like falling
leaves or splashes of November colour.
The structured arrangements of the different elements of the composition reveal
McGuinness’s familiarity with Cubism which she had acquired in Paris in the late
1920s while a student at André Lhote’s academy. Although the style only made a
marginal impact on her earlier work, she renewed her interest in the aesthetic in the
later 1950s and early 1960s in paintings such as this. Cubism allowed her to simplify
form. Combined with her fundamental sense of design it produces in
Flight
a tightly
constructed and evocative work. The painting knowingly engages in a progressive
way with the traditional subject of landscape. It focuses on an intimate view of
nature, the trees, the birds and the sky, using understated but a highly expressive
combination of colour and form. In 1980 James White summarised McGuinness’s
ability to abstract from nature: ‘... more than any of her Irish contemporaries, she was
able to impose her own will on her pictures, so that the dominating pattern of the
underlying form is little apparent. ‘
[1]
Dr. Roisin Kennedy, March 2014
[1]
James White
Norah McGuinness. An Appreciation
, Irish Times, 24 November 1980.
€8,000 - 12,000
