WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2022

74 47 Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) KITTIWAKES, DUNMORE, COUNTY WATERFORD oil on canvas titled on reverse; also with artist’s studio label and Irish Exhibition of Living Art label on reverse 18 by 24in. (45.7 by 61cm) Frame Dimensions: 26.5 by 32.5in. (67.3 by 82.6cm) Provenance: Family of the artist; Thence by descent; Adam’s, 5 December 2006, lot 99; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Irish Exhibition of Living Art’ ,1948, catalogue no. 3 Norah McGuinness visited County Waterford numerous times during her life and frequently stayed with her artist friend Joan Jameson (1892-1953). Jameson was born in London - the eldest daughter of Sir Richard John Musgrave, 5th Baronet - and studied in Paris, at the Académie Julian. In 1920 she married Tom Jameson of Rock House, Ardmore, County Waterford and together they relocated from London to Tourin, Waterford in 1929 and were part of a large social and artistic network of the time which included McGuinness. A record of her time spent in Waterford in Jameson’s home vividly captures her enthusiasm for the county’s landscape, It was perhaps on one of these trips that McGuinness ventured further along the coastline to the fishery port of Dunmore East which lies at the mouth of Waterford Harbour. The area boasts three main Kittiwake colonies, the Outer Harbour being the largest where the birds can be viewed from a number of vantage points at Badger’s Cove and Men’s Cove. It is possible that one of these locations was the inspiration for the present work. McGuinness was evidently pleased with the oil which she submitted to the Irish Exhibition of Living Art for exhibition in 1948. She was a founding member of the IELA five years previous alongside Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Fr Jack Hanlon, Louis le Brocquy and Margaret Clarke, having been conceived as an annual forum for those artists whose work was considered too Modernist for the more traditional venues such as the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). Contemporary critics at this juncture in her career described her work as “’At its best... forthright, spontaneous and dramatic” (Dublin Magazine, 1949) while on the occasion of her first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, The Studio spoke of, “courage, coupled with hidden knowledge, a looseness of technique completely free of sloppiness and a richness of colour unusual in its mature balance”. Two years after Kittiwakes, Dunmore was painted, this progressive artist, together with Nano Reid were the first Irish artists chosen to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Both female, Modernist and pioneering, this was a significant choice by the fledgling Republic to showcase their country on an international stage. Adelle Hughes, August 2022 1 https://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhibit/web/Display/article/331/3/The_Ardmore_Journal_Joan_Jameson__Norah_ McGuinness__Two_Painters_In_Ardmore.html €20,000-€30,000 (£17,240-£25,860 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot47 “Norah often stayed at Rock House. Working with immediate perception of all that Ardmore showed her, she filled notebooks with charcoal, pencil and watercolour sketches; no passing cloud or sun-hot rock went unnoticed; these records formed the basis for some of her best paintings. She worked with delight and energy, seeing the bones of her picture develop. An early riser, she was out every summer morning for a swim off the Boatcove. Hardly out of the water and dry before her eye had seen and retained some angle of a gull’s flight or the structural perfection of a pile of lobster pots. “1