Norah McGuinness works under the hammer valued up to €40,000

Four works by Norah McGuinness go under the hammer in two forthcoming auctions of outstanding Irish art.
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Two paintings by the Derry artist feature alongside works by Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry, Lilian Lucy Davidson and Louis le Brocquy in an auction by Whyte’s in Dublin on Monday.

‘Red Castle, Portstewart,’ dated 1945, has an estimate of between €7,000 and €10,000.

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‘Coastal Town by Moonlight,’ dated 1962, has an asking price of between €10,000 and €15,000.

The auction house remarks: “As an artist McGuinness’ technique was in constant flux, frequently absorbing new techniques and assimilating them to suit her own intuitive style.”

Whyte’s adds: “Unlike her contemporaries, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, who also studied under André Lhote, McGuinness did not fully adopt the Cubist approach but rather fashioned elements of it with a Fauvist appreciation of colour to create her own unique reading of her subject.”

Two further works by the Derry woman feature in a separate auction of ‘outstanding Irish art and sculpture’ at de Veres in Dublin on June 14.

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‘Roadside Grasses, Donegal,’ a work dated from 1969, will go under the hammer from €20,000 to €30,000 but as the ‘Journal’ went to press was under a bid of €14,000.

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Two cubist-inspired landscapes by Derry-born modernist Norah McGuinness to go un...

‘Dublin Bay,’ dated c1970, is valued between €30,000 and €40,000. It was under a bid for €20,000.

In commentary the auction house notes: “Dublin Bay shows how McGuinness managed to remain topographically faithful to her subject while at the same time transforming it into something completely new.

“The ‘seen’ world was the starting point for a bold abstract composition dominated by big, swirling curves. Against this sweeping movement, the artist placed a cluster of vertical posts which are cleverly echoed in distant smoke stacks and, of course, the iconic Poolbeg chimneys.”

All of the paintings are works of oil on canvas.

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McGuinness, who died in 1980, was born at Lawrence Hill, Derry in 1901 and studied at the ‘Tech’ before moving to Dublin where she trained under Harry Clarke and Patrick Tuohy. She was an associate of influential Irish modernist Mainie Jellett and on the latter’s advice travelled to Paris in 1929 to study under the French cubist André Lhote.

To view lots visit www.whytes.ie and www.deveres.ie

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