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 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 acquisitions 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!
Una Watters (1918-1965) 