Tag: national museum

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.