Una in print

An under-considered facet of Una Watters’ work has been her illustrative and graphics work. We’ve seen elsewhere on this blog – https://unawattersartist.com/2023/02/18/unas-little-book-of-kells/ – that she did a great deal of commissioned art and calligraphic work for Brian O’Higgins’s publishing company, which produced Christmas cards and religious booklets for the commercial market. But she also did magazine illustration, most prominently with the Irish-language journal, Feasta.

Feasta was published monthly between 1948 and 2023 by Conradh na Gaeilge and became one of most significant literary magazines published in the Irish language. Una Watters became a regular contributor to Feasta after her husband, Eugene (writing as Eoghan Ó Tuairisc) took over the editorship of the journal in 1963.

Her work for Feasta has been documented in an important article by broadcaster and Irish scholar Mícheál Ó hUanacháin, in the August issue of Comhar – https://comhar.ie/iris/85/8/dearadh-agus-maisiu/. Ó hUanacháin was heavily involved in the production of Feasta and saw Una’s work for the magazine at first-hand.

Because the article is in Irish, I will have to paraphrase the content and hope Mícheál will forgive me.

Eugene took over the editorship of Feasta in the summer of 1963. According to Ó hUanacháin, Eugene felt the magazine had a somewhat stale air with a narrow range of subject matter. He wanted to change all that. He immediately set to, rebranding it as a review “of literature, art, politics and Irish thought”. In keeping with this new motto, he also wanted to renew the appearance of the magazine. That was where Una came in.

Una’s first cover for Feasta appeared for the 1963 Christmas edition – An Sagart agus an Amharclann – about the influence of the clergy on the theatre. As well as the cover, her work was evident all over the Christmas 1963 edition – there was a card she’d designed for the O’Higgins company, a collage of portraits of actors in an Irish language production of “Roots”, a drama by English playwright Arnold Wesker at the Damer theatre, and a visual for a column on chess.

Between then and October 1965, Una completed 16 covers for the magazine. The subject matters varied widely – Jackie Kennedy, the singer Dusty Springfield, W B Yeats and T S Eliot, Roger Casement – as well as many incidental illustrations – graphics for a drama column, sketches of classical composers, and typographic symbols which were used as article dividers. She was an integral part of Eugene’s vision for and reshaping of the magazine as a lively publication engaged with cultural and current affairs.

Unfortunately, as Ó hUanacháin remarks, with Una’s death, that vision was halted in its tracks. Eugene gave up his editorship of the magazine, replaced temporarily by Ó hUanacháin himself. However, Una’s work lived on. For many years afterwards, her incidental graphics were still gracing the pages of Feasta.