46
Recent commentators have suggested that Jellett, rather than being inspired and spurred
on by the formative male influences in her life, was rather held back and forced into
a narrow analytical style which didn’t entirely suit her. However, she tackled what she
termed the ‘walls of prejudice’
21
head on and persevered in her desire to drag Ireland into
the modern era. In 1943 she was instrumental in organising the first Irish Exhibition of
Living Art, a reaction to the strictures of the “outdated” Royal Hibernian Academy, and
was its first president. Unfortunately she became ill that year and didn’t live long enough
to see the benefits of her labour, or to allow her own art to progress and develop further.
Interestingly the Irish Exhibition of Art disbanded in 1987, having, in the view of its
members, served its purpose, and the RHA once again played a significant but updated
role
22
.
The mantle of modernism was also taken up by Norah McGuinness (1901-1980), one of
Northern Ireland’s most accomplished artists. Educated in Derry and Dublin, her visits
to London led her to the discovery of Impressionism and later Cubism. In 1929 after
her marriage broke up, she was encouraged by Mainie Jellett to go to Paris and study
with André Lhote which she did for two years, during which time her style changed
considerably. She developed her skill with colour and composition, moving away from the
academic realist tradition she first studied. Pure abstraction didn’t interest her and made
reference to her “dependence on things seen, the visual things, the things experienced
through nature”
23
. She also designed book covers, was a designer and window dresser
for the Brown Thomas department store and illustrated books – including W.B. Yeats’s
Stories of Red Hanrahan and the Secret Rose
of which he praised the “powerful simplicity”.
She also played a vital role in the art establishment in Ireland as the President of the Irish
Exhibition of Living Art from 1944 to 1970, stepping into Mainie Jellett’s formidable
shoes.
21
Finucane, P. and Connolly, M. Journeys through Line and Colour, p.91, University of Limerick (2010)
22
Ulster Academy of Arts 1930 – 1950
[accessed
1st May 2014]
23
Norah McGuinness, interview with Caroline Walsh. In: The Irish Times (May 1, 1976)
Cont. p50
