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Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980)
Butterfly Island
Oil on canvas, 51 x 76cm (20 x 30”)
Signed and dated ‘73. Signed and inscribed original gallery label verso
Exhibited: Norah McGuinness Exhibition,The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, September 1975, Cat.
No. 17, where purchased and thence by descent
Norah McGuinness, who studied cubism in the studio of Andre Lhote in Paris in the 1920s,
went on to develop the aesthetic in her later highly regarded landscapes. She rejected natural-
ism, preferring to make paintings that expressed a modern sense of space and light. According
to James White, she ‘ignored all accidental details.Her designer’s eye recognised just what was
going to become part of her play, with shapes and colours’.
1
Butterfly Island
is typical of McGuinness’s landscapes based on the Dublin coastline in which
she uses her deep understanding of cubism to schematise the shapes and colours of the scene.
She moves away from representation, transforming the view into a painting in which pattern
is paramount. The ‘island’, a sand bank in the water, is depicted as a bright green curved
element at the centre of the composition.The darker tonalities used in the land in the back-
ground and the deeper blue elements in the water convey the dappled sunlight of an Irish
summer. The butterflies fluttering around the tall grasses of the sandbank introduce a subtly
dynamic and above all decorative element into the painting.
1
James White ‘An Appreciation’, Irish Times, 24 November 1980.
Dr. Roisin Kennedy
April 2014
€7,000 - 10,000
