culture night – Una Watters (1918-1965)

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 Mayoresses’ 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.

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

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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