NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA (1901-1980) Fishing in the West Oil on canvas, 71 x 91.5cms (28 x 36'') Signed Provenance: From the collection of the late President Erskine Childers by descent; Private...

NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA (1901-1980) Fishing in the West Oil on canvas, 71 x 91.5cms (28 x 36'') Signed Provenance: From the collection of the late President Erskine Childers by descent; Private Collection. This picture was bought while Erskine Childers was President and it hung in Ar?s an Uachtar?in until Childers untimely death in November 1974. Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition 1974, cat. no. 20 costing ?350.00 Erskine Childers obviously liked this period of Norah's work, as he also owned another work by her entitled Curlew, which he lent for the Norah McGuinness Retrospective in Trinity College Dublin in 1968. This exquisite painting by an artist at the very height of her powers ought to bear the title Mistress of all she surveys ! The heron stands majestically surveying her beautiful domain.: it belongs to her. Indeed, it reflects her in the stylishly meandering river which covets her sensuous curves and elegant pose. This might be a lady in her boudoir gazing at her reflection in her looking-glass. For certainly this is a female heron, at least if her surroundings are anything to go by. The luscious pinks, lilacs, mauves, chromes and turquoises make for a very feminine painting. If this were one of Norah's window- sets for Dublin's Brown Thomas or New York's Lord and Taylor, the background landscape would be represented by a sumptuous velvet bedspread littered with dazzling bijoux., the bright river a string of pearls. Norah was adept at creating illusion both in her painting and in her window-dressing. One informed the other. During her stay in New York in the 1930s she dressed the windows of the prestigious department store Lord and Taylor whose windows are rather small. In order to display the maximum number of covetable items she created a raked platform to highlight them and thus endowed them with a sense of theatricality. This may also be the inspiration for her trademark bird's eye view. Ahead of her time in so many ways, in her tendency to mirror objects in her paintings - in this case the terns with the boulders, the cottage with the reeds, the fields with the facets of light in the river - she is forecasting today's advertising technique of the flopped image which is generated by a mirror-reversal of an original across a vertical axis thus improving the aesthetic appeal of the image itself. It is apt that this sophisticated painting was purchased from the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1974 by the then President of Ireland, Erskine Childers. No doubt, our superior heron felt quite at home at Aras an Uachtar?in ! S?le Connaughton-Deeny,2011

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