In the second of a series of occasional blogs considering individual paintings of Una’s, Logan Sisley, Acting Head of Collections at the Hugh Lane Gallery, discusses “The People’s Gardens”.
Una Watters is represented by one painting in the Hugh Lane Gallery Collection, a charming Dublin scene painted in 1963 called The People’s Gardens (oil on canvas, 40.6 x 50.8 cm). It shows Watters’ distinctive angular modernist style with contrasts of light and shade and areas of pure colour.
It is one of a number of paintings by Watters depicting Dublin life. The People’s Gardens is a public garden within the Phoenix Park near the Parkgate Street entrance. It opened in the mid-1860s in order to address the lack of public recreational space in Dublin. It contains an ornamental lake, children’s playground, picnic areas and Victorian bedding schemes. Watters captures the undulating terrain of the gardens.
As is typical of her work, the trees and figures are 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.
Leisure scenes in outdoor settings such as this have been a popular subject for painters since the 19th century. Other examples at the Hugh Lane Gallery include Edouard Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1865), Eugene Boudin’s Normandy beach scenes (1867 and 1893), Edgar Degas’ Beach Scene (c. 1876-1877), John Lavery’s river scene, Sutton Courtney (1917) and William Leech’s Beach, South of France (1921-6).
The People’s Gardens was shown at the 1964 Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition. The Thomas Haverty Trust bought the painting and lent it for Watters’ posthumous retrospective exhibition in 1966. The following year the Trust donated the work to Hugh Lane Gallery. The Haverty Trust was established following the death of the artist Thomas Haverty who left a sum of money for the purchase of paintings by Irish artists for public galleries and institutions. Between 1935 and 1966, the Trust gave the Hugh Lane Gallery over 40 works including paintings by Mary Swanzy, William Leech, Brigid Ganly and Maurice MacGonigal (who encouraged Watters in her art studies).
As an artist so intrinsically linked to the city, it is fitting that Watters’ work found a home in Dublin’s city gallery. She painted while working for Dublin Corporation’s libraries and met her husband Eugene at a dance at the Teachers’ Club, one of the gallery’s neighbours on Parnell Square.
Logan Sisley
Logan Sisley and Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh discuss The People’s Gardens at the Hugh Lane Gallery for RTE Nationwide programme on March 6, 2020.
Una Watters (1918-1965) 