Tag: una watters

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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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Wheels within wheels

It’s always a triumph when a lost Una Watters comes to light. It’s a red-letter occasion when two are unearthed in the same week. As an indirect result of my recent talk in Ballinasloe about Una’s Galway-inspired work, an owner of one of her untraced oils from the 1966 posthumous exhibition has come forward.

With the help of Eugene Watters’ niece, Georgina O’Donovan, we’ve identified the new find as To the Sea (oil on canvas, 43.1 x 54.6 cms) dated to 1962. It depicts a couple on bicycles, viewed from the back, as they cycle towards the sea, their swimming gear rolled up in towels on the back carriers.

I presumed, at first, this was a Galway scene, but on further investigation, it seems this is an east coast painting, more specifically, we think, Laytown, Co Meath. Una’s naming of paintings is always a help in this regard, being plain and informative. To the Sea suggests proximity; cycling to the sea from Ballinasloe would have been quite a trip.

The bridges in the background also led me to believe it might have been Ballinasloe and its environs. (Una had a weakness for bridges) There seems to be several bridges in evidence here – a railway bridge, an iron footbridge, and on the left a stone arch. The railway bridge could be the Laytown Viaduct and the stone arch could belong to the Boyne Valley Viaduct. Geographically, these might not be visible in the same frame but Una often used this composite approach to her cityscapes – see my earlier blog on City Bridge – https://unawattersartist.com/2020/06/09/the-bridge-of-time/ – where several stone landmarks of Dublin are impressionistically viewed together, jigsaw-like, on the same plane.

The horizon of the painting is quite high – note the perspective of the road winding away behind the bridge, and the sea – typical of an uncertain Irish summer – is the opaque grey expanse at eye-level for the figures. A steamer puffing smoke ploughs away on the high horizon mark above the male cyclist’s head.

Una would have known this area very well from holidays there as a child and Georgina O’Donovan remembers her parents and Eugene and Una taking several cycling holidays together. “There is an innocence about it all,” she says about this painting. “The couple holding hands, the swimming gear on the carriers and the possibility of catching that boat to new lands and adventures.”  

Georgina has identified her father, Tom Watters, (Eugene’s brother) as the model for the man in the painting – see Tom Watters also in Wild Apples – see https://unawattersartist.com/2020/06/24/wild-apples/ and The Game of Chess. https://unawattersartist.com/2021/04/10/a-game-of-chess/

Una often depicted herself in her work as a dark woman in red, so this blonde woman in her sunny yellow dress is definitely not her. However, Georgina believes she bears a passing likeness to the mother of the painting’s present owner, who was gifted To the Sea after Una’s death.

In this work Una’s interest is also in the dynamic movement of the bicycles. The whir of the wheels, the tensing of the woman’s calves, the folds of her dress are depicted in strong physical strokes so speed and movement are made manifest on the canvas. This dynamism is mirrored in the foreground of the painting. The vegetation looks turbulent, tossed-looking, and the very ground underfoot unstable.

Una’s rendering of physical gestures often hints at emotional drama. The woman’s back is to us so she remains mysterious, but we see the man sketchily in profile as he holds her hand and turns to her. A beam of weak misted light from an unseen source grazes her shoulder, but it mirrors the slant of his gaze. She’s cycling in a straight line, but the front wheel of his bike is not evident, merely suggested by a series of veering circles. The implication is he’s having a slight wobble. Is he about to fall in more ways than one?

The second find is a watercolour, untitled, showing Ballyforan Bridge near Ballinasloe, which was completed in 1953. This was a favoured picnic site for the Watters family and a meeting point for fishing expeditions in the summer consisting of Eugene, Una, his brother Tom and wife Bridie, and their children. The watercolour is delicate in its rendering, serene in its mood showing the glassy River Suck on a still, mauve summer’s evening, while a man driving a hay cart is seen crossing the bridge. The arches of the bridge (bridges, again!) and the spindly trees either side are echoed in the water giving a shimmering, ethereal feel the work.

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Una Watters’ Galway

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.

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For your diary

After the flurry of the presentation of Una’s Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain to the national collection by Colbert Kearney in 2023, things have been quiet on the Una Watters front.

However, this year will see more activity. It’s an anniversary year – 60 years on from her death in 1965 – and hopefully that may see an upswing in Una Watters-related activities.

First development this year is the inclusion of Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain in the National Gallery of Ireland’s diary. Always a beautiful production, this year is no different, and Una appears for the week of May 26, 2025.

The director of the gallery, Dr Caroline Campbell, remarks in the diary’s introduction that Una’s Girl has already become a” popular favourite” among gallery patrons. This makes a trifecta of images the NGI has used of Una’s signature painting – it appeared in last year’s calendar and is for sale in postcard form in the gallery shop. (Speaking of merch, I’m waiting for the gallery umbrella and tote bag!)

As Sara Donaldson author of the notes accompanying the image in the diary writes – “Watters’s awareness of Cubist forms is evident everywhere, while Futurist-inspired ‘lines of force’ represent the sheets of rain, evoking the atmosphere of a wet urban scene.”

Speaking of dates for the diary, I will be doing a lecture – “The Lost Reputation of Una Watters” as part of Ballinasloe & District Historical Society’s Town Talks series in March – more details to come closer to the time.

Meanwhile, I’m on work on a book on Una so if any of you out there have stories or memories of her or Eugene Watters, do contact me via the email on the blog.

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Picture Postcard

First the painting, now the postcard! Una’s Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain, now proudly part of the national collection, got another boost this month with the news that there’s now a postcard of the painting on sale at the National Gallery of Ireland shop.

This fine postcard reproduction also gives the painting the potential of reaching a mass audience.

I’m a sucker for a postcard memento so I’m delighted to know that Una’s striking image has a chance to reach gallery visitors who, like me, enjoy extending the memory of standing in front of the real thing with a pocket-sized reproduction.

Speaking of the real thing, Girl Going by Trinity hangs in Room 15 of NGI, along with several of Una’s contemporaries, Mainie Jellet, Mary Swanzy and Louis le Brocquy.

November is both Una Watters’ birth and death month (born this day, November 4, 1918 – died November 20, 1965). The Dublin weather she depicts here is distinctly Novembrian. Perfect for a calendar!

What about it, National Gallery? Una Watters as November’s calendar girl?