Adams Important Irish Art 23rd March 2016 : You can Download a PDF Version from the Bottom Menu Down Arrow Icon

Oil on canvas, 41 x 56cm (16¼ x 22”)

Signed

Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin, inscribed with title on label verso. Sold Important Irish Art Sale these

rooms 23rd March 2005, Cat. No.106, where purchased by the current owner.

Exhibited: Thought to be exhibited ‘

Norah McGuinness Exhibition

’, Dawson Gallery 1959, catalogue No.8

under title ‘Liffey’

Terence de Vere wrote of McGuinness:-

“Norah McGuinness, like the majority of our better artists, was born in Northern Ireland; but her art

training began in the Dublin College of Art. From there she went to London and then to Paris, where she

worked in the studio of Andre L’Hote.The Paris experience might have been decisive as it was the case of

Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett who worked in the same studio. The coincidence was fruitful in another way.

These artists joined forces to inaugurate the annual exhibition of Living Art, a rival to the Royal Hibernian

Academy’s exhibitions which, they believed, had become sterile. But L’Hote, as a painter, did not have any

permanent effect on McGuinness. She was by nature the least cubist of beings. One might as well have

tried to imprison the painters of baroque in a pattern of rigid squares. Her style is more reminiscent of

Vlaminck. She is essentially decorative; and there is no element of cerebration in her work. It is free-flow-

ing and, usually, joyous. Her colour sense is where she is most reminiscent of Vlaminck. The later sombre

Norah McGuinness is more impressive than the earlier. But essentially her art is decorative, and in her

drawing she is always witty, gay and inventive.”

€ 7,000 - 10,000