Conor Tallon spoke to Michael Waldron from the Crawford Art Gallery outside in their garden café about this weeks offering.... It’s time for a ‘Guinness’ with this WORK OF THE WEEK! May Guinness, that is.Not only does Portrait Study (c.1930) reveal May Guinness’ artistic influences but it also suggests her later collecting habits. Slightly downcast in a brown felt hat, the subject of this study is pensive and appears to be a thoroughly modern woman, much like the artist was herself.Descended from brewer Arthur Guinness, May Guinness (1863-1955) was also a nurse and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1917 for her brave service in the French army during the Battle of Verdun (1916).Although less experimental than some of her other works, this painting combines a Fauvist handling of colour and free brushwork with some of the spatial and formal aspects of Cubism. Both modernist art movements would have a pronounced effect on Guinness, who had begun to pursue her artistry in the 1890s as a watercolourist.Extensively travelled throughout her life, Guinness spent time in Paris in the early twentieth century, where she encountered the work of Henri Matisse. Having studied with Norman Garstin at Newlyn, alongside Mildred Anne Butler, she would later work with Andre Lhote, as did fellow Irish artists Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett, and Norah McGuinness. She also collected paintings by Matisse and Pablo Picasso.Portrait Study (c.1930) by May Guinness is featured in lucid abnormalities, our current exhibition in the historic Gibson Galleries (Floor 1). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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