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.

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Una Watters’ Galway

What better way to mark International Women’s Day than to celebrate the life and work of Dublin artist Una Watters. I’ll be giving an illustrated talk on Una in Ballinasloe on March 8. Although she hailed from Finglas in Dublin, Una spent a great deal of time in Ballinasloe, the home town of her husband, Eugene Watters ( the writer Eoghan O Tuairisc).

The couple spent holidays in Galway, staying with family, fishing on the River Suck and engaged in artistic pursuits – painting for Una and writing for Eugene. In my talk, I’ll be concentrating on Una’s work featuring the town and environs, and discussing how her experiences there influenced her work.

As well as obvious influences, I’ll be looking at more subliminal connections e.g. the importance of the River Suck, where Una, an expert fisherwoman, spent many hours. While fishing there in the late 1950s, Una made a spectacular discovery – a ring-pommelled, single handed sword, dated to the 16th-century. Although the end of the blade was snapped off, it was a significant find, and was presented to the National Museum on July 13, 1962. The sword can be seen in the Kildare Street branch of the museum, in the Medieval Ireland 1150-1550 exhibition.

An image of the sword can be seen by following this link – the sword Una found is on the right: – https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/6cax20/16th_century_irish_ring_pommel_sword_1024x3072/#lightbox

Is it fanciful to wonder if the rescue of this sword from the depths of the River Suck, in what seems like an echo of the Excalibur myth, might have come to the surface again when Una was designing the emblem for the 1966 Easter Rising Commemorative Year?

Her design, which won an open competition organised by the Arts Council, references the “Sword of Light”, connected in early literature with the first coming of the Gaels in Ireland and it occurs throughout later literature as symbolising intuitive knowledge, education and progress. It was taken up by scholars of the 19th century and was adopted by revolutionary thinkers to indicate their dual objectives – armed insurrection and an Irish cultural renaissance. (See the Design of Easter Rising Symbol page elsewhere on this site.)

The talk takes place at St John’s Church, Ballinasloe, Co Galway, on March 8. All welcome.

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For your diary

After the flurry of the presentation of Una’s Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain to the national collection by Colbert Kearney in 2023, things have been quiet on the Una Watters front.

However, this year will see more activity. It’s an anniversary year – 60 years on from her death in 1965 – and hopefully that may see an upswing in Una Watters-related activities.

First development this year is the inclusion of Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain in the National Gallery of Ireland’s diary. Always a beautiful production, this year is no different, and Una appears for the week of May 26, 2025.

The director of the gallery, Dr Caroline Campbell, remarks in the diary’s introduction that Una’s Girl has already become a” popular favourite” among gallery patrons. This makes a trifecta of images the NGI has used of Una’s signature painting – it appeared in last year’s calendar and is for sale in postcard form in the gallery shop. (Speaking of merch, I’m waiting for the gallery umbrella and tote bag!)

As Sara Donaldson author of the notes accompanying the image in the diary writes – “Watters’s awareness of Cubist forms is evident everywhere, while Futurist-inspired ‘lines of force’ represent the sheets of rain, evoking the atmosphere of a wet urban scene.”

Speaking of dates for the diary, I will be doing a lecture – “The Lost Reputation of Una Watters” as part of Ballinasloe & District Historical Society’s Town Talks series in March – more details to come closer to the time.

Meanwhile, I’m on work on a book on Una so if any of you out there have stories or memories of her or Eugene Watters, do contact me via the email on the blog.

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Lighting again!

Una Watters’ winning design of An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light) which became the official emblem of the 1966 Easter Rising commemorations has got a new lease of life thanks to Ballinasloe entrepreneur, Enda Creaven.

Creaven (below) has reproduced a limited edition of Una’s design in the form of a lapel pin which comes in both nickel-plated silver and gold and retails at E10.

Una’s design was chosen as the winner in a public competition run by the Arts Council in 1965. During the 1966 golden jubilee year, it appeared on badges, brooches and tie pins, it was stamped on all official publications, showed up in hallmark form on silverware struck by the Assay Office (see above), and perhaps most memorably, on blue and yellow wooden plaques pinned to the fronts of buses.

The Sword of Light has deep mythological and nationalist resonances – it was the weapon with magical properties used by King Nuada of the Tuatha de Danann to slay giants, according to Celtic mythology. Its image was later adopted by scholars of the 19th-century Gaelic revival to symbolise both armed rebellion and cultural renaissance, and in the early 20th century the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) called its weekly newspaper – edited by Patrick Pearse – An Claidheamh Soluis.

According to the 1966 Commemoration Committee, the winning Sword of Light motif was meant to represent “intuitive knowledge, education and progress”. In fact, the search for a new Rising logo was part of a government attempt to replace the Easter Lily emblem, which the republican movement, proscribed at the time, was selling door to door in order to raise funds. Ironically, Una Watters’ winning design – a sleek, stylised depiction of the Sword – subliminally references the pure, clean lines of the lily.

Winning the competition was a high point in Watters’ career, and a showcase for her refined design aesthetic. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see the success of her design during the 50th anniversary year; she died unexpectedly in November 1965.

Enquiries about the new pins to: enda@theirday.com

Above clockwise: 1. The original gold lapel pin issued in 1966. 2. A wooden plaque which featured on buses. 3. Enda Creaven’s new lapel pins alongside a nickel brooch version that was issued in 1966.

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Ms February 2024

Just five days ago, I made a cheeky call to the National Gallery of Ireland to include Una Watters’ Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain in one of its future annual calendars. Hey presto, no sooner wished for than granted! The NGI, it seems, was way ahead of me!

The 2024 calendar has just gone on sale in the gallery shop and my spies in Dublin tell me Una’s Trinity Miss holds the February slot. Other new NGI acquisitions share the pages of the calendar – a minor French fellow by the name of Paul Cezanne, for one, along with old gallery favourites such as John Singer Sargent, Paul Signac, William John Leech, Mildred Anne Butler, John Lavery and Mary Swanzy.

Aren’t they in good company!

The inclusion of Una’s work in the calendar is a real vote of confidence in her work. For us here at the blog, it means that Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain will be restored to our walls. It’s almost 11 months since the men from the gallery came to take the original away.

It’ll be like old times seeing Trinity Girl on a daily basis.

The February page might well be open all year!

Paul Cézanne, La Vie des Champs, 1876-77, which features on the cover of the calendar. Photograph: National Gallery of Ireland

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Picture Postcard

First the painting, now the postcard! Una’s Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, now proudly part of the national collection, got another boost this month with the news that there’s now a postcard of the painting on sale at the National Gallery of Ireland shop.

This fine postcard reproduction also gives the painting the potential of reaching a mass audience.

I’m a sucker for a postcard memento so I’m delighted to know that Una’s striking image has a chance to reach gallery visitors who, like me, enjoy extending the memory of standing in front of the real thing with a pocket-sized reproduction.

Speaking of the real thing, Girl Going by Trinity hangs in Room 15 of NGI, along with several of Una’s contemporaries, Mainie Jellet, Mary Swanzy and Louis le Brocquy.

November is both Una Watters’ birth and death month (born this day, November 4, 1918 – died November 20, 1965). The Dublin weather she depicts here is distinctly Novembrian. Perfect for a calendar!

What about it, National Gallery? Una Watters as November’s calendar girl?