Whyte's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM

51 IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM 37 Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) NOVEMBER ON THE LIFFEY, DUBLIN, 1948 watercolour and gouache signed and dated lower right; titled on Dawson Gallery label on reverse 17 by 23in. (43.2 by 58.4cm) Frame Size: 25 by 31in. (63.5 by 78.7cm) Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Private collection Norah McGuinness was born in Lawrence Hill, County Derry, in 1901 and died in Dún Laoghaire, in south county Dublin in 1980. Having acquired a solid training in the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1921, complemented by subsequent accolades and her first exhibition in the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1924, McGuinness later developed her skills abroad, first, in London at the Chelsea Polytechnic. In 1925 she marriedWicklow librarian Geoffrey Phibbs (Geoffrey Taylor, the poet) but the marriage broke up in 1929 and she moved to Paris the same year until 1931 to study under André Lhote. In 1943 Norah McGuinness was one of the founding members of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA), of which she later became President, following the death of Mainie Jellett in 1944. She retained her presidency until 1972. In 1950 she was selected alongside Nano Reid to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale and in 1957 she was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy but resigned in 1969. As an artist McGuinness’ technique was in constant flux, frequently absorbing new techniques and assimilating them to suit her own intuitive style. During her long career she found a balance between her design work and her painting and brought influences from each field into the other. Living in London during the 1930s, she exhibited with the London Group and the Seven and Five Society, as well as creating fashion illustrations for Vogue and the Bystander and working in theatre. In 1937 she went to New York where she exhibited her paintings, created illustrations for Harper’s Bazaar and designed windows for Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. While back in Dublin she designed windows for Brown Thomas for over thirty years as well as working as a book illustrator and with the Abbey and Gaiety Theatres. Books she illustrated include Laurence Sternes, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1925) and titles by W. B. Yeats. Unlike her contemporaries, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, who also studied under André Lhote, McGuinness did not fully adopt the Cubist approach but rather fashioned elements of it with a Fauvist appreciation of colour to create her own unique reading of her subject. From the 1940s to 1960s she held her own in the arts scene as evidenced in her recurring and highly successful solo exhibitions with the Victor Waddington Galleries and Dawson Gallery Dublin and the Leicester Gallery, London. A major retrospective of her work took place in the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, in 1968 and in 1973 the College awarded her an honorary doctorate. €8,000-€12,000 (£7,080-£10,620 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot37