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Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901 - 1980)
Flight over Mulroy
Oil on canvas, 51 x 76cm (20 x 30”)
Signed
Dawson Gallery label verso
Exhibited:
Irish Women Artists 1870-1970
, Adam’s, Dublin, July 2014, AVA Gallery,
Clandeboye Aug-Sept 2014, Cat. No. 89
Literature:
Irish Women Artists 1870-1970
, illustrated p.103
Norah McGuinness’s paintings of the coastline of Ireland were highly regarded in her lifetime
and have since come to be recognised as amongst her most distinctive contribution to modern
Irish landscape painting. Many depict the murky sandbanks of Dublin, where she lived. But
she also had a studio at Rathmullan on the banks of Lough Swilly close to Co. Derry where
she was from originally. While staying here she painted many scenes of Mulroy Bay in North
Donegal, the earliest dating from the 1940s.Mulroy links Fanad Head and Rosguill Peninsula
and is now spanned by a bridge but was connected by ferry for many years.
Literally taking a bird’s eye view the painting lays out the contours of the land and sea as
seen from above. The shape of the coastline is simplified and the rocks, hills and shrubbery
transformed into decorative elements within the flat patterning of the terrain. Soaring across
this stylised landscape is a gull, its body extended outwards revealing its plumage and making
it appear exotic. More detailed and focused than the ground beneath it, the juxtaposition
of the bird and the land emphasise the two separate planes that each occupy. In this way
McGuinness draws on her extensive understanding of design and her knowledge of cubism.
The final painting was made in the studio, not en plein air, although the artist probably used
drawings and sketches made at the scene as her initial inspiration. In the final painting the
vagaries of the landscape are subsumed into a more controlled work of art. Subtle geometric
patterning and blends of greens, greys and orange transform the natural world into a self-
consciously modern painting.As inMcGuinness’s other Irish landscapes, she manages to make
the familiar unfamiliar and present the Irish coastline as exotic and strangely contemporary.
Dr. Roisin Kennedy
Dublin, September 2014
€8,000 - 12,000
