Norah McGuinness

1901-1980

Norah McGuinness was born in Derry in 1901, the daughter of a coal merchant. She entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1921, where she won a three-year scholarship, and later continued her studies at the Chelsea Polytechnic in London.  In 1923 she won a Royal Dublin Society medal and the following year she exhibited for the first time in the Royal Hibernian Academy.  Early in life she had to support herself by illustrating books, designing theatre sets and costumes. 

With the encouragement of Mainie Jellett, she decided to travel to Paris in 1929 to work at the studio of André Lhote.  By the 1930’s, McGuinness had moved to London where she resumed her book illustration and stage design work, in addition to exhibiting paintings regularly in London, Paris, New York and Dublin.  A founder member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she became president in 1944.  In 1950 she was chosen to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale with Nano Reid, the same year that her work appeared in the Contemporary Irish Painting show which toured North America.  In 1957 the artist was elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, but she resigned in 1969.  In a retrospective exhibition held in 1959 in the Ulster Museum, one of her paintings was selected to compete in the International Guggenheim Award.  A major retrospective of her paintings, drawings, prints, theatrical designs and book illustrations was held at Trinity College, Dublin and later toured to Cork and Derry. 

Norah McGuinness received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin in 1973.  Her works are in all the major public Irish collections (including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin) and in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London