Author: Mary Morrissy

Mary Morrissy curates this site. She is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and journalist. She has taught creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland for the past 20 years, and is also an individual literary mentor.

Categories
News

Culture vultures

Cover of Standing in the Rain - Peter Sirr

Una Watters’s Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain features on the cover of poet Peter Sirr’s latest book of essays, called appropriately enough, Standing in the Rain. It’s a perfect marriage of content and image. Sirr’s reflections on poetry includes Randall Jarrell’s observation that a good poet ‘is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times’. Una’s “Girl” is undergoing such an immersive experience set against Trinity’s landmark facade, under the gaze of the Anglo-Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith and, of course, being unmercifully rained upon. The lightning bolts may be missing, but they’re in the artistic gaze.

Thanks to Peter, a Dubliner like Una, and Gallery Press for choosing the painting – now happily part of the national collection but not on show at the NGI at the moment. It’s a gentle reminder of what a striking work it is.

Peter’s book, along with John Banville’s play, The Gold Standard, and Kevin Graham’s poetry collection, Daylight Mystery, will be launched at Notre Dame Dublin, 58 Merrion Square, Dublin on Thursday September 24 @ 6pm.

Meanwhile, lucky Culture Night vultures got a chance to see Una’ Watters’ The People’s Gardens last Friday night when the Mansion House threw its doors open for impromptu tours. The painting is on loan from the Hugh Lane City Gallery – currently closed for renovation – and hangs in the Blue Room/The Lady Mayoress’s parlour. This is a room not generally open to the public which means it’s only accessible on occasions like Culture Night.

The People’s Gardens dating to 1963 depicts a slice of Dublin’s public life in the gardens which are part of the Phoenix Park demesne. It was subsequently acquired by the Thomas Haverty Trust and donated to the Hugh Lane. The Trust was established to facilitate the purchase of paintings by Irish artists for public galleries and institutions. Between 1935 and 1966, it donated over 40 works to the Hugh Lane including paintings by Swanzy, William Leech, Brigid Ganly and Maurice MacGonigal (who encouraged Watters in her art studies).

As Logan Sisley, Acting Head of Collections at the Hugh Lane, noted in a blog on this site (The People’s Gardens: May 6,2020) the painting is typical of Una’s work with the trees and figures pared down to angular forms. “This shows the influence of earlier modern art movements such as Cubism and Futurism, albeit interpreted in her own style. Her clever use of shadows adds depth – notably under the trees and in the figure of the girl kicking the ball, the man reading a paper and the duck taking off (or landing). These also demonstrate a keen observation of people and an eye for detail. The strong shadows and summer dresses suggest a warm sunny day, yet the elderly couple walking arm-in-arm on the path are still dressed in heavy coats and hats.”

The painting hasn’t been shown in Parnell Square since the 1970s although, according to gallery records, it was on loan to the City Hall between 1969 and 1974 and again in the 1980s. It was also hung in the ILAC Centre Library in 1987 along with a number of other works from the Hugh Lane, including Harry Kernoff, John Leech and Lizzie Stephens, all of them depicting scenes of Dublin.

It was given on long-term loan to the Mansion House in 2023 on the request of the then Lord Mayor. However, its present home is only semi-public. It’s not possible to walk in off the street and view the work as you could if it were in a public gallery. So it’s hiding in plain sight.

Now that Una has four paintings in the national collection, thanks to generous donations, it would be great to see this one being shown alongside the others recently acquired by the NGI as a showcase of Una Watters’ growing body of recognised work.

Categories
News

Una goes national – twice

The Red Bridge (1956)

Hot on the heels of acquiring through donation three Una Watters’ paintings, the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) has hung two of the works in Room 15. The Red Bridge, above and Isabella, below, are two of the three paintings recently donated and they now hang side by side.

For the time being, Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, (1959), which has been on display since 2023 in the same room and become a firm favourite with gallery patrons, has been removed to facilitate the new arrivals. A temporary situation, we hope.

Having four of Una’s works in the national collection, and two on display, is a situation we couldn’t have dreamed about when we started our quest to rehabilitate Una’s reputation way back in 2020.

It means the public has a chance to see the range and versatility of Una’s talent. The Red Bridge (1956) highlights her Cubist-influenced rendering of landscape, featuring the River Suck in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, where Una and husband Eugene spent their summers. The town and surroundings often featured in her work.

Isabella (1956)

Isabella (also 1956) is a portrait of Eugene’s sister, Isa, and shows another string to Una’s bow – portraiture. There are several portraits among her paintings – one of her husband, featured in her retrospective 2022 show, which, those who knew him say, captures his personality exactly.

Self-Portrait in Green (1943)

There’s also a striking self-portrait which we used for the poster of the 2022 retrospective – an intense work which commands the viewer’s attention with its candour. As a view of the sitter’s back, Isabella may be less forthright, but it manages to create a intriguing sense of mystery.

The last of the trio of paintings donated, Harvest (1965) – a very late work – is not on the walls of the NGI yet, but there are plans to show all of Una’s works together some time in 2027. In the meantime, if you want to see Una in duplicate, now’s the time to visit!

Categories
News

Three more Unas bound for the National Gallery

Isabella, (1956)
Harvest, (1965)
The Red Bridge (1956)

Exciting news to report! The best yet! The National Gallery of Ireland has acquired three – yes three! – more of Una Watters’ paintings to add to the national collection. They will join Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, which has been hanging in Room 15, and garnering lots of public interest, since it was donated in 2023.

The works, which have been donated to the gallery,  are all oils – Isabella (1956), Harvest (1965) and The Red Bridge (1956).

These are all premier works (well, that could be said of all Una’s work, really) showing her at the height of her painterly powers. They also demonstrate her versatility of form – portrait, narrative painting and landscape.

The donations once again highlight the generosity of the paintings’ owners – a generosity that was so often on offer when Sheila Smith, Una’s niece, and I first got together to organise “Into the Light”, the 2022 retrospective exhibition which started the ball rolling on this project.

Our campaign got going in earnest during Covid as we trawled the country – albeit remotely – trying to trace Una’s work. We ran appeals through the Irish Times, as well as RTE television and radio in our quest to find her lost paintings and to alert the public to a painter whose reputation had been totally eclipsed. In truth, we saw no further than that. We never dreamed that one day four of Una’s works would be part of the national collection

But due to the largesse of the owners of Una’s paintings, who not only gave us work but often drove to the United Arts Club in Dublin to deliver the paintings in person, that show helped to put Una on the artistic map.

It was their faith in Sheila and me – two amateurs in the art world – and their dedicated enthusiasm for Una’s work that made the 2022 show possible. And it’s exactly the same spirit that has now elevated Una Watters to what we’ve always considered her rightful place – a nationally recognised painter of note. To them, to the United Arts Club and in particular, Brid Tunney who facilitated the 2022 show, and to all the supporters and followers of this website, a big thank you.

There are plans to show the new works some time in 2027. In that regard, I no longer have to say watch this space. Watch the National Gallery instead!

Categories
News

Una Watters’ work is ‘must-see’ art

The National Gallery of Ireland has asked their volunteers to share the paintings they tell visitors not to miss when exploring the gallery for the first time. This month, Gallery volunteer and novelist Catherine Crichton chose Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, 1959, by Una Watters (1918-1965). 

What do you like about this artwork? Does it have any personal significance for you?

A woman in a green shirt stands in a gallery looking at a painting on the wall of a woman in red with an umbrella over her head

”This modernist picture with its cubist influences is a stylish and evocative image of a familiar location. In contrast to the dull, wet day and Trinity’s stone façade, the girl wears a vibrant ruby-red coat. Hunched against the weather, she looks ahead, gripping her orange umbrella determinedly in both hands. The rain slants down in parallel rods, distorting her outfit’s chic lines, the paving and building stones, and the upright railings. The picture demonstrates wonderful technical skill. The vivid green of Trinity’s front lawn seems to bounce up, reflected in the sheeting raindrops.

“In 1965 Una Watters died suddenly, aged just 47. Her husband gave her paintings to friends and relatives as keepsakes and they disappeared from view. Many have now been rediscovered thanks to the writer Mary Morrissy and the artist’s niece, Sheila Smith. Una Watters attended the same school I did, the Holy Faith in Glasnevin. I like to think she was a proud northsider.”

What do you enjoy about volunteering at the Gallery?

“I love the surprised, happy look on visitors’ faces when we tell them the Gallery has free admission. And when they ask an obscure question and I actually know the answer (not that I always do). The online art appreciation courses are a great way to learn more about the national collection.” 

Una Watters’ painting hangs in Room 15 of the NGI.

Catherine Crichton’s novel on the renowned Irish stained glass artist, Harry Clarke, The Window, will be published by Stairwell Books in 2027 – https://catherinecrichtonwrites.com/about/about-my-novel-the-geneva-window/

For more information on the gallery’s volunteer programme see – https://www.nationalgallery.ie/join-and-give/become-volunteer/volunteer-artwork-month

Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, 1959. © Dr Rita Kelly/Watters. Photo, National Gallery of Ireland.

Photo of Catherine Crichton: Bríd O’Donovan

Categories
News

Trinity girl is top of the pops

Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain is going viral. Pop legend CMAT has been spreading the word on Instagram of her passion for Una’s painting. In late December last year she took her admiration one step further when she roped in the British art historian and writer, Katy Hessel, into her Una Watters campaign.

Hessel is the author of several books, including the ground-breaking “The Story of Art without Men”, a revisionist illustrated history of female artistic endeavour, which was published to great acclaim in 2022. “Will change the history of art. . . thank God,” artist Tracy Emin wrote of it.

Guesting on Katy Hessel’s blog, “Great Women Artists”, CMAT wrote about Una’s Trinity Girl. “I immediately became obsessed with it, without knowing anything about her (Una) at all. I just thought I knew the girl in the painting, and that she looked like me, and brought me back so clearly to what it was like when I lived there and was hopeful and traipsed around the city on foot, despite everything. . . Then I found out. . . that she lived in Finglas and died young.”

“I wish we knew more about her but right now it’s my favourite painting in maybe the whole world. I made my love take a picture of me with it last week when I brought him to see it as I’ve talked about it so much.”

Hessel duly took up the cudgels on Una’s behalf to highlight the work of Irish women artists. – https://katyhessel.substack.com/p/6-irish-women-artists-to-know. She includes Una in her shortlist, along with Mainie Jellet, Margaret Clarke, Mary Swanzy, Genieve Figgis and Dorothy Cross.

Una has found another fan in Hessel: “It’s no wonder CMAT loves Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain. It’s an incredible energetic, modernist take on a Dublin downpour. I love how the pouring rain – a shape so impossible to freeze in an image – becomes shards of fractured glass. It’s like she’s evoking the physicality of hailstones in a painting that already evokes so many senses. I also love the glamour of this Dublin girl, striding out on her own: her red coat, smart shoes, high-up ponytail, striking eyes and pink cheeks,” she writes.

“Watters’ story is a reminder of how easily the work of artists can be lost and how thrilling it is to bring them back into the light.”

Meanwhile, Una’s Trinity Girl also features as “Work of the Week” in today’s Sunday’s Business Post (15/03/26), as chosen by Michelle Cullen, a director at Accenture in Ireland, the global technology company, who describes Una’s work as “an utterly captivating piece”.

“The painting makes me think about journeys, physical and symbolic; about those who are displaced or navigating spaces where they are admitted, but may not feel welcome or at ease. The relentless rain mirrors that experience.”

The problem of female exclusion is a passion project for Cullen – she heads up the Accenture’s diversity programme and is a co founder of Women on the Walls, a project dedicated to commissioning portraits of women of note to be shown in public spaces. https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/about/inclusion-diversity/women-on-walls.

Working in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin City University and most recently at UCC, the company has sponsored numerous paintings by Irish artists that celebrate women leaders in the fields of science, arts and social engagement. Cullen also serves on the board of the National Gallery of Ireland, where Una’s painting now hangs as part of the national collection, thanks to the efforts of this website and its followers.