Tag: ballinasloe

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Wheels within wheels

It’s always a triumph when a lost Una Watters comes to light. It’s a red-letter occasion when two are unearthed in the same week. As an indirect result of my recent talk in Ballinasloe about Una’s Galway-inspired work, an owner of one of her untraced oils from the 1966 posthumous exhibition has come forward.

With the help of Eugene Watters’ niece, Georgina O’Donovan, we’ve identified the new find as To the Sea (oil on canvas, 43.1 x 54.6 cms) dated to 1962. It depicts a couple on bicycles, viewed from the back, as they cycle towards the sea, their swimming gear rolled up in towels on the back carriers.

I presumed, at first, this was a Galway scene, but on further investigation, it seems this is an east coast painting, more specifically, we think, Laytown, Co Meath. Una’s naming of paintings is always a help in this regard, being plain and informative. To the Sea suggests proximity; cycling to the sea from Ballinasloe would have been quite a trip.

The bridges in the background also led me to believe it might have been Ballinasloe and its environs. (Una had a weakness for bridges) There seems to be several bridges in evidence here – a railway bridge, an iron footbridge, and on the left a stone arch. The railway bridge could be the Laytown Viaduct and the stone arch could belong to the Boyne Valley Viaduct. Geographically, these might not be visible in the same frame but Una often used this composite approach to her cityscapes – see my earlier blog on City Bridge – https://unawattersartist.com/2020/06/09/the-bridge-of-time/ – where several stone landmarks of Dublin are impressionistically viewed together, jigsaw-like, on the same plane.

The horizon of the painting is quite high – note the perspective of the road winding away behind the bridge, and the sea – typical of an uncertain Irish summer – is the opaque grey expanse at eye-level for the figures. A steamer puffing smoke ploughs away on the high horizon mark above the male cyclist’s head.

Una would have known this area very well from holidays there as a child and Georgina O’Donovan remembers her parents and Eugene and Una taking several cycling holidays together. “There is an innocence about it all,” she says about this painting. “The couple holding hands, the swimming gear on the carriers and the possibility of catching that boat to new lands and adventures.”  

Georgina has identified her father, Tom Watters, (Eugene’s brother) as the model for the man in the painting – see Tom Watters also in Wild Apples – see https://unawattersartist.com/2020/06/24/wild-apples/ and The Game of Chess. https://unawattersartist.com/2021/04/10/a-game-of-chess/

Una often depicted herself in her work as a dark woman in red, so this blonde woman in her sunny yellow dress is definitely not her. However, Georgina believes she bears a passing likeness to the mother of the painting’s present owner, who was gifted To the Sea after Una’s death.

In this work Una’s interest is also in the dynamic movement of the bicycles. The whir of the wheels, the tensing of the woman’s calves, the folds of her dress are depicted in strong physical strokes so speed and movement are made manifest on the canvas. This dynamism is mirrored in the foreground of the painting. The vegetation looks turbulent, tossed-looking, and the very ground underfoot unstable.

Una’s rendering of physical gestures often hints at emotional drama. The woman’s back is to us so she remains mysterious, but we see the man sketchily in profile as he holds her hand and turns to her. A beam of weak misted light from an unseen source grazes her shoulder, but it mirrors the slant of his gaze. She’s cycling in a straight line, but the front wheel of his bike is not evident, merely suggested by a series of veering circles. The implication is he’s having a slight wobble. Is he about to fall in more ways than one?

The second find is a watercolour, untitled, showing Ballyforan Bridge near Ballinasloe, which was completed in 1953. This was a favoured picnic site for the Watters family and a meeting point for fishing expeditions in the summer consisting of Eugene, Una, his brother Tom and wife Bridie, and their children. The watercolour is delicate in its rendering, serene in its mood showing the glassy River Suck on a still, mauve summer’s evening, while a man driving a hay cart is seen crossing the bridge. The arches of the bridge (bridges, again!) and the spindly trees either side are echoed in the water giving a shimmering, ethereal feel the work.

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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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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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Return to Ballinasloe

Una Watters will be making a return to Ballinasloe this autumn when two of her late-period watercolours will be presented to the Ballinasloe Library by Una’s family. The presentation will happen on Culture Night (September 23).

The watercolours are part of a set that hung for over 50 years on the walls of the bridge room in the old Emerald Ballroom on Society Street, now Ballinasloe’s community and jobs hub. Several of the series featured in our retrospective – Una Watters: Into the Light – held earlier this year at the United Arts Club, Dublin.

When the watercolours were being reframed in preparation for the show, five more were found on the reverse sides, bringing the total rediscovered to 19 out of the original 25.

They depict impressionistic landscapes and flowers executed swiftly and are delicate and ethereal in mood. They were were perhaps studies for a bigger work, though they have a real minimalist charm in their own right. Her husband, Eugene, documented how the paintings, probably her last works, were painted very shortly before Una’s unexpected death on November 21, 1965.

“About a fortnight before the end,” he wrote, “she painted a remarkable series of watercolours, in a style and technique she had not used before.  These pictures, 25 in number, were all painted in a single day, the artist working at high speed, as if hypnotised, in a final burst of creative energy.  The room at Cappagh Crossroads (looking out on the late-autumn garden, trees, cornfields, and the Dublin hills) was simply littered with watercolours; and so absorbed was the artist that she did not wait to get fresh paper but painted new aspects of the developing theme on the backs of those already dry.”

The two watercolours from the so-called Emerald Ballroom series – see separate page on this site – will be on permanent display in the library on Society Street. It’s a particularly fitting location given that Una spent her working life as a librarian.

BELOVED CLAY

In another Ballinalsoe development, the sign outside Creagh Cemetery has been altered to include reference to Una’s final resting place. Although she was a native of Cappagh, near Finglas, Co Dublin, Ballinasloe had become a second home during her marriage because Eugene hailed from Ballinasloe. Hitherto, only Eugene’s name was listed, but on the instigation of Enda Creaven, and with the support of Una’s niece, Sheila Smith, the new sign went up over the summer giving Una prominence. She was buried in Creagh in 1965. The inscription reads: Here is the beloved clay which they inhabited.

Eugene and Una’s grave at Creagh Cemetery – Photograph: David Smith
Photograph: Enda Creaven

Una was very attached to Ballinasloe and its environs. She and Eugene spent every summer with Eugene’s family, writing and painting as well as fishing on the River Suck, at which Una became a verified expert. Her watercolours often recorded this river life – see blog “Wild Apples” June 24, 2020. As Eugene remarked about that painting, the river depicted could be any river, “but it is a real river, our Suck; an actual landing and landing place, in a grove of bog-ash and hazel in the wilderness near the mouth of the Killeglin river”.

The presentation of Una’s paintings to Ballinasloe Library, Society Street, takes place as part of Culture Night celebrations, Friday, September 23. Time and details TBA.

Top of the post: Dawnscape in Grey Limestone (24 ) – see our dedicated Emerald Ballroom Watercolours page – one of two watercolours being donated to Ballinsaloe Library.

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Una in focus

Portrait of Eugene

Colbert Kearney, a pupil and a long-time friend of Eugene Watters, remembers seeing Una’s portrait of her husband in the making when he visited their home in the early 1960s.

I remember this portrait, E. R. Watters (oil on canvas, 1965, 33 x 43 cms) emerging on Una’s easel in Cappagh Cross and admiring her ability to conjure up such a convincing image of a man I had been familiar with since—some seven years earlier—he had taught me during my final year in St Fergal’s Boys National School on the Cappagh Road in Finglas.

Seeing it again more than half a century later was a Pygmalion moment: I expected the image in the frame to turn and talk to me, so miraculously had the artist captured not only the appearance but also the essence of the man at a crucial stage in his career.

Una had been married to Eugene for 20 years and probably knew him better than he knew himself.  Not having children of their own, they spent most of those years in the Arcadian tranquility of her native place in the countryside beyond Finglas, the remainder in and around Eugene’s native Ballinasloe.  Otherwise they lived quietly and for each other.  And for their respective art – his writing and her painting.

Teaching had not been Eugene’s chosen profession.  An obviously brilliant student, he had won a scholarship to University College Galway and must have thought his dream of studying his beloved languages—Greek and Latin, English and Irish—at the highest level had come true.  But his family could not afford to maintain him in Galway and he had to settle for teacher training in Drumcondra.  He never forgot the heartbreak of the scholarship forgone, never lost his love of learning, could never conceal a degree of disdain for academics.

A consolation during these years of Emergency, (1939-1945), was his service as  a commissioned officer in the National Army.  He was immensely proud of this role and was married in his uniform.  For boys who were eager to learn he was a wonderful teacher; the others kept their heads down in order to avoid military discipline Lieutenant Watters was not above imposing in the classroom.

He could never forgive teaching for taking the time he wanted to devote to writing.  His first major success had been as Eoghan Ó Tuarisc in the Oireachtas literary competitions but soon this was matched by the work of Eugene Watters.  While working away, Eugene and Una shared a relatively secluded life, avoiding the pubs and cliques of Bohemian Dublin, but this changed when Alan Figgis published first Eugene’s novel,  Murder in Three Moves in 1960, and in 1964, his long poem The Week-End of Dermot and Grace and his Irish collection Lux Aeterna.

He had emerged on to the main stage and could contemplate to bidding farewell to the  classroom.  Many cautioned him against trading his permanent pensionable post for the vicissitudes of full-time writing but Una, knowing his mind better than anybody else, was a solitary voice of support.

And that is when she has caught him in this portrait, dated to 1965.  At 46 he’s conscious of being close to the height of his powers, knowing that the poems published in the previous year constituted an unprecedented, bilingual achievement.   Nor is there anything amateur about this man of letters.  His demeanour, especially his eyes, are those of a soldier whose discipline has seen him through a long campaign, of a Platonist who has seen into the life of things.

But not even he could see what a happy chance it was that Una had seized the moment when she did.  Within a year she was dead and Eugene—soon unrecognisable from the confident figure of the portrait—was about to spend some grim years in the wilderness, an Orpheus search of his Eurydice, repeating with a new conviction a favourite quotation from Herodotus:  to theion esti phthoneron.  The gods are envious.

eugene-and-una-wedding

Eugene and Una on their wedding day, March 10, 1945