Beschreibung:

Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) The Customs House, Dublin (1954) Oil on canvas, 68 x 91cm (26¾ x 35¾'') Signed and dated (19)'54 This colourful painting of The Customs House in Dublin proclaims the strong influence of the School of Paris on Norah McGuinness Gandons imposing building is presented as almost weightless, its classical architecture depicted sketchily in thick dark lines. In front of it toy-like boats bob on the surface of the Liffey. A small back tug spews out an enormous plume of blue-white smoke while a larger steam boat in the foreground is painted a mixture of glorious oranges and pinks. A woman in a sundress sits on the quay while a man in short blue shirt sleeves walks past. McGuinness makes a feature of the lift belt hanging from an elegant lamp post and surrounded by four metal poles in the right-hand foreground. The latter are reminiscent of the Gondola poles at the Ponte di Rialto in Venice, familiar to tourists everywhere. The golden sunlight seen in the orange tones of the sky and the relaxed summer atmosphere of the scene is equally more Mediterranean than Irish sea. McGuinness represented Ireland at the major international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, in 1950. Her knowledge of France and Italy must have inspired her imagination in the making of this work. The strong bright colours and the diaphanous forms of the buildings and fixtures of the city recall the work of the French Fauvists, especially Raoul Dufy McGuinness had studied art in Paris in the early 1930s and was well versed in modern French art. The painting is full of movement and the noises and sounds of the location are conveyed through the emancipated deployment of line across the composition. As Anne Crookshank wrote, McGuinness, uses a very free, bold brushwork which suggests rather than describes the objects in her pictures. Having lived and worked in Paris, London and New York, the artist was a cosmopolitan at heart and chose to represent Dublin as a vibrant European city with grand buildings, motor cars and hedonistic citizens. This is one of several oil paintings of the city centre that McGuinness made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of which were included in her 1950 Venice Biennale exhibition. She had made gouache and watercolour paintings of the Thames and its surroundings when she lived in London in the 1930s. A gouache painting of New York Harbour c.1938 was included in her 1968 Retrospective exhibition in Trinity College Dublin in 1968. This also featured several gouaches and watercolours of Dublin city such a The Canal, Leeson Street; The Customs House, 1939, and The Liffey, 1944. From the mid 1940s McGuinness produced oil paintings of Dublin that centred on the Liffey or the canals. Clearly the interaction of the natural elements of water contrasted by the built environment fired her imagination as it had the Impressionists, the Fauvists and many other modernist artists. Later in her career Dublin Bay and its bird-life would become the focus of McGuinnesss urban paintings and the metropolitan atmosphere of this earlier work was replaced by a more abstract engagement with nature. February 2019 Róisín Kennedy Norah McGuinness HRHA (1901-1980) The Customs House, Dublin (1954) Oil on canvas, 68 x 91cm (26¾ x 35¾'') Signed and dated (19)'54 This colourful painting of The Customs House in Dublin proclaims the strong influence of the School of Paris on Norah McGuinness Gandons imposing building is presented as almost weightless, its classical architecture depicted sketchily in thick dark lines. In front of it toy-like boats bob on the surface of the Liffey. A small back tug spews out an enormous plume of blue-white smoke while a larger steam boat in the foreground is painted a mixture of glorious oranges and pinks. A woman in a sundress sits on the quay while a man in short blue shirt sleeves walks past. McGuinness makes a feature of the lift belt hanging from an elegant lamp post and surrounded by four metal