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Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901 - 1980)
Still Life with Strawberries on Garden Table
Oil on canvas, 51 x 40.5cm (20 x 16”)
Signed with initials
Norah McGuinness was an avid gardener and images of gardens recur in her work.This
later painting combines many of the elements that characterise her approach to the
subject. It uses a subtle cubist sense of perspective in which one sees objects depicted
from different viewpoints simultaneously.The still-life was a subject beloved of cubists
because of the various contradictions between art and reality that it could evoke. Here
we look down on the table top on which sit gigantic baskets of strawberries, while
we view the large earthenware pot on the floor behind, directly from the front. The
honeycomb patterned flooring moves upwards on the same plane as the table. A dif-
ferent almost Oriental element is introduced in the background where the dark blue of
the sky predominates.The overhanging vines and trellis are delineated in a calligraphic
manner. Probably based on her garden in York Road, Dun Laoghaire, McGuinness’s
innate sense of design transforms the mundane into a sophisticated and modern work
of art. She draws on her extensive knowledge of French cubism which she had learnt
in Paris at the end of the 1920s, but equally she deploys a fundamental understanding
of design principles that she learnt from teachers such as Harry Clarke in the Dublin
Metropolitan School of Art and from a lifetime as an illustrator and stylist. It is this
facility to draw together sophisticated blends of colour and form that made her such a
highly regarded artist in her lifetime.
Still-life with Strawberries
is an excellent example
of McGuinness’s skill at its most controlled.
Dr. Roisin Kennedy
October 2014
€8,000 - 12,000