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Una Watters’ work is ‘must-see’ art

The National Gallery of Ireland has asked their volunteers to share the paintings they tell visitors not to miss when exploring the gallery for the first time. This month, Gallery volunteer and novelist Catherine Crichton chose Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, 1959, by Una Watters (1918-1965). 

What do you like about this artwork? Does it have any personal significance for you?

A woman in a green shirt stands in a gallery looking at a painting on the wall of a woman in red with an umbrella over her head

”This modernist picture with its cubist influences is a stylish and evocative image of a familiar location. In contrast to the dull, wet day and Trinity’s stone façade, the girl wears a vibrant ruby-red coat. Hunched against the weather, she looks ahead, gripping her orange umbrella determinedly in both hands. The rain slants down in parallel rods, distorting her outfit’s chic lines, the paving and building stones, and the upright railings. The picture demonstrates wonderful technical skill. The vivid green of Trinity’s front lawn seems to bounce up, reflected in the sheeting raindrops.

“In 1965 Una Watters died suddenly, aged just 47. Her husband gave her paintings to friends and relatives as keepsakes and they disappeared from view. Many have now been rediscovered thanks to the writer Mary Morrissy and the artist’s niece, Sheila Smith. Una Watters attended the same school I did, the Holy Faith in Glasnevin. I like to think she was a proud northsider.”

What do you enjoy about volunteering at the Gallery?

“I love the surprised, happy look on visitors’ faces when we tell them the Gallery has free admission. And when they ask an obscure question and I actually know the answer (not that I always do). The online art appreciation courses are a great way to learn more about the national collection.” 

Una Watters’ painting hangs in Room 15 of the NGI.

Catherine Crichton’s novel on the renowned Irish stained glass artist, Harry Clarke, The Window, will be published by Stairwell Books in 2027 – https://catherinecrichtonwrites.com/about/about-my-novel-the-geneva-window/

For more information on the gallery’s volunteer programme see – https://www.nationalgallery.ie/join-and-give/become-volunteer/volunteer-artwork-month

Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, 1959. © Dr Rita Kelly/Watters. Photo, National Gallery of Ireland.

Photo of Catherine Crichton: Bríd O’Donovan

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Trinity girl is top of the pops

Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain is going viral. Pop legend CMAT has been spreading the word on Instagram of her passion for Una’s painting. In late December last year she took her admiration one step further when she roped in the British art historian and writer, Katy Hessel, into her Una Watters campaign.

Hessel is the author of several books, including the ground-breaking “The Story of Art without Men”, a revisionist illustrated history of female artistic endeavour, which was published to great acclaim in 2022. “Will change the history of art. . . thank God,” artist Tracy Emin wrote of it.

Guesting on Katy Hessel’s blog, “Great Women Artists”, CMAT wrote about Una’s Trinity Girl. “I immediately became obsessed with it, without knowing anything about her (Una) at all. I just thought I knew the girl in the painting, and that she looked like me, and brought me back so clearly to what it was like when I lived there and was hopeful and traipsed around the city on foot, despite everything. . . Then I found out. . . that she lived in Finglas and died young.”

“I wish we knew more about her but right now it’s my favourite painting in maybe the whole world. I made my love take a picture of me with it last week when I brought him to see it as I’ve talked about it so much.”

Hessel duly took up the cudgels on Una’s behalf to highlight the work of Irish women artists. – https://katyhessel.substack.com/p/6-irish-women-artists-to-know. She includes Una in her shortlist, along with Mainie Jellet, Margaret Clarke, Mary Swanzy, Genieve Figgis and Dorothy Cross.

Una has found another fan in Hessel: “It’s no wonder CMAT loves Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain. It’s an incredible energetic, modernist take on a Dublin downpour. I love how the pouring rain – a shape so impossible to freeze in an image – becomes shards of fractured glass. It’s like she’s evoking the physicality of hailstones in a painting that already evokes so many senses. I also love the glamour of this Dublin girl, striding out on her own: her red coat, smart shoes, high-up ponytail, striking eyes and pink cheeks,” she writes.

“Watters’ story is a reminder of how easily the work of artists can be lost and how thrilling it is to bring them back into the light.”

Meanwhile, Una’s Trinity Girl also features as “Work of the Week” in today’s Sunday’s Business Post (15/03/26), as chosen by Michelle Cullen, a director at Accenture in Ireland, the global technology company, who describes Una’s work as “an utterly captivating piece”.

“The painting makes me think about journeys, physical and symbolic; about those who are displaced or navigating spaces where they are admitted, but may not feel welcome or at ease. The relentless rain mirrors that experience.”

The problem of female exclusion is a passion project for Cullen – she heads up the Accenture’s diversity programme and is a co founder of Women on the Walls, a project dedicated to commissioning portraits of women of note to be shown in public spaces. https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/about/inclusion-diversity/women-on-walls.

Working in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin City University and most recently at UCC, the company has sponsored numerous paintings by Irish artists that celebrate women leaders in the fields of science, arts and social engagement. Cullen also serves on the board of the National Gallery of Ireland, where Una’s painting now hangs as part of the national collection, thanks to the efforts of this website and its followers.

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Una in focus

Placed among her peers

Malahide (1964)

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Una Watters’ death (Nov 20, 1965) but it was also the year when her artistic powers were at an all-time high. She’d designed the winning logo for the Easter Rising Commemorations in an Arts Council open competition, she’d completed five major oil paintings plus a ground-breaking cycle of watercolours (see the Emerald Ballroom Watercolours page elsewhere on this site) which suggested a new artistic direction.

She’d also participated in the 25th Annual Waterford Art Exhibition, a major group show which places her firmly in context. Una exhibited two recently completed works – Wild Apples (oil on canvas, 56 x 43 cms) – https://unawattersartist.com/2020/06/24/wild-apples/ – which was sold for £30 and Malahide (oil on canvas, 37.5 x 35 cms) – https://unawattersartist.com/2020/07/22/the-three-graces-in-malahide/ – which featured in the show, but was not for sale.

The exhibition was a veritable who’s who of mid-century Irish art featuring Harry Kernoff, Anne Yeats, Patrick Pye, Gerard Dillon, George Campbell, Brigid Ganly, Norah McGuinness, Bea Orpen, George Collie, Walter Verling, Barrie Cooke, Camille Souter and Gerda Fromel, to name but 13 contributors to the show, which featured a total of 127 exhibits.

Seeing Una in this company is an eloquent reminder of her standing in the art world of the time. (It’s interesting to note that her works were in the higher price bracket among contributors. George Collie’s Industry and Commerce and National Museum from the Artist’s Studio was on sale for £100, but he was an elder statesman in the art world, a portraitist of note and a member of the RHA. Apart from Collie, prices for work ranged from £12 up to £45).

Una’s status among her contemporaries is sometimes forgotten because of the eclipse her reputation suffered immediately after her death, which we discuss elsewhere on this site. Only two of her works have come up for public auction in the past 20 years, so it’s easy to write her off as having a small output. In fact, however, although much of her work has flown under the radar, Una was a prolific artist as even a casual trawl through this site demonstrates.

We’re still looking for seven known paintings of hers from the posthumous show organised by her husband, Eugene (Eoghan O Tuairsic) a year after her death. (See The 1966 Exhibition page) And who knows how many more paintings are out there that we don’t know about?

Poignantly, the Waterford show, which ran from November 6 to November 20, closed on the day of Una’s death.

Waterford still plays a significant role in the artistic scene boasting one of the most impressive regional collections in the south. The Waterford Municipal Gallery was founded by a group of public -spirited citizens in the late 1930s. The current Waterford Art Gallery which boasts a collection of 750 paintings, prints, photography and sculptures, is the direct descendant of the municipal gallery which, as historian Roy Foster has noted, formed a “cautious bridgehead” for art when it opened in hard times in 1939.

Wild Apples (1964)