Born in Derry in 1901, Norah McGuinness trained at the Metropolitan School of Art under Patrick Touhy and Harry Clarke. She traveled to Paris in 1929, wherer she enrolled at the school of Cubist painter Andre Lhote. In the 1930´s, McGuinness was living in London, a member of Lucy Wertheim´s “Twenties Group”, and exhibiting at the Wertheim Gallery. The inspiration of the White Stag exhibitions in Dublin led to the establishment in 1943 of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, by McGuinness, Louis le Brocquy, Mainie Jellett and Jack Hanlon. McGuinness was elected president of ILEA in 1957, a postion she retained for almost twenty years. The popularity of the ILEA showed that there were many artists working in Ireland outside the academic realist tradition. The initial exhibitions included Nano Reid, Patrick Scott and Gerard Dillon. McGuinness, Doreen Vanston and Mainie Jellett showed the influence of Cubism in their work, while Colin Middleton brought a Surrealist flavour to the exhibition.

Throughout her career, McGuinness´s paintings, based on strong compositions and a confident use of colour, were influenced by what became known as the “School of Paris”. However with the passing of years, her style inevitably became less progressive, and by the 1970´s she was painting in a style that had long since been overtaken by new developments such as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art.

The oil painting River to the Sea dates from around 1959, and shows a landscape reduced to formalized shapes and colours, in which rich blues predominate, along with greens and purples. These rich colours are constrastd with flashes of lighter colours and white zig-zag lines. On the left of the composition is a bank of wild flowers, while to the right, the figure of a man stands by the river bank. A strong vertical of a tree on the right of the painting stabilises the composition, that is lent a dash of virtuosity by the sweeping curve of the line on the left, indicating the bank of the river, that cuts through the composition, from top to bottom of the painting. In the background, the white form of a cottage stands amidst fields of yellow, orange and ochre. The overall result is a rich and satisfying composition.

-PM