Nano Reid (1900-1981)Artist in the Country (1973)Oil on board, 50 x 60cm (19¾ x 23½)SignedProvenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin.Exhibited: The Dawson Gallery, solo exhibition, Dublin 1973, Catalogue No.10; 'Nano Reid Retrospective', Dublin and Belfast 1974/5, Catalogue No.94, illustrated p.22; Arts Council of Ireland, 'The Delighted Eye', 1980, Catalogue No.72; Belltable Arts Centre, 'Towards the World's Edge', Limerick 1981, Catalogue No.29.In his memoir A Passion for Collecting, Patrick Murphy recalls that in 1973 he wandered into a solo exhibition of Nano Reid’s at the Dawson Gallery and was ‘greatly smitten by the exceptional quality of these late paintings’ (1). He quickly sold some shares in order to buy two paintings, one of which was Artist in the Country (2). Murphy recalls that these purchases marked the beginning of his relationship with the Dawson Gallery and its proprietor Leo Smith who told him ‘At last, you have discovered where to find the best pictures in Ireland’ (3). Anne Margaret (Nano) Reid (1900-1981) was born in Drogheda, the daughter of a publican. She attended the Sienna Convent in the town before winning a scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin, where she was taught by Sean Keating and Patrick Tuohy. The artist Hilda van Stockum, who befriended Reid at art school in Dublin, recalled her as ‘a fierce red-head, staring with keen green eyes behind spectacles, she was uncompromising, blunt and desperately looking for truth’ (4). Reid furthered her art education in Paris at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and in London at the Central School of Art and Chelsea Polytechnic before returning to Dublin. From 1934, she exhibited regularly with the Dublin Society of Painters and began to establish a reputation particularly for her portraits many of which featured her friends from Dublin’s literary circles. Despite finding critical success and, along with Norah McGuinness, representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1950, as Brian Fallon has recently argued, Reid is not as well-known as she deserves to be largely because she was an innovator and ahead of her time: ‘Nano Reid is a major Irish painter, a thorough-going original and innovator, and that it is precisely this originality which has worked against her in certain quarters' (5). As works such as Artist in the Country and Boyne Fishing suggest, Reid often flouted the traditional laws of perspective and depicted some elements of the composition from above while other parts, particularly figures, are illustrated more conventionally. Today we can see her approach to perspective as a direct legacy of Cubism which she would have encountered both in Paris in the 1920s and through the work of Irish artists including Jellett, Hone and Swanzy.Reid’s handling of paint and her preference in works such as Boyne Fishing and The Farm Hand to render her subjects in loose, energetic brush strokes that deposited thin layers of paint in a distinctive earthy palette of olive green, grey, umber and ochre, also sets her apart from her Irish contemporaries and suggests the influence of expressionism as manifested in Germany and particularly France. Patrick Murphy recalls that Artist in the Country is a portrait of painter Kit Elliot in her kitchen. The figure of the artist bent over her work occupies the left hand corner of the canvas, a black cat on a chair sits in the centre and three red hens can be seen in the garden outside. Cats often appear in Reid’s work and Brian Fallon argues that the ‘airborn animals’ that feature in her work ‘probably derive from Chagall’ (6). While the painting is primarily green, unusually flashes of cobalt blue and areas of light pink and mauve help to define the forms and suggest a domestic interior. Although her influences were international, Reid’s subject matter was often personal and linked to her home in Drogheda and the Boyne Valley. James White, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, (1964-1980) believed that ‘the surroundings of Drogheda had a big influence on Nano.’ She told the journalist Martin Dillon in 1974 , ‘What started me off was an interest in the prehistoric Irish remains. An interest grew up around all that and the natural thing was to paint it. … I looked around me more and painted what appealed to me in an emotional way. The thing is I have to have a subject that I feel about and the only ones I feel about are those places (Boyne Valley). There is no use in trying to paint a place I have no feeling for. The essence of a place is very important to me’ (7). Although Reid’s images of Drogheda and the Boyne Valley were not intended to be documentary, paintings such as Boyne Fishing constitute a valuable record of the town and its inhabitants and record and preserve customs ways of life that are long gone. Murphy bought Boyne Fishing directly from Reid during a visit to Drogheda at the invitation of Nano and her sister. It appealed to him for its ‘anarchic energy and subtle execution.’ (8) Boyne Fishing shares its subject matter with the earlier work Salmon Fishing in the Boyne which is more representational and clearly depicts the fisher men, their currachs and nets. In the The Farm Hand Reid, depicts another image of everyday work in the rural landscape. Despite being loosely sketched, in both The Farm Hand and Boyne Fishing, Reid has captured the effort, focus and strain in the men’s limbs and stance. Although her family ran a pub in town, the sight of men and women working in the fields would have been familiar to Reid and she enjoyed elevating these manual labourers to heroic figures rooted in the landscape. The Boyne Valley was of central importance to Reid but she also painted other areas of Ireland including Connemara, where she stayed on the island of Inishlacken with her friend Gerard Dillon, and West Cork. In The West Cork Mountains (1949) Reid has captured the barely tamed vegetation of the Ireland’s south west coast where the verdant green flora is punctuated by dark pink Fucshia and the vibrant yellow of buttercups and whins. Patrick Murphy recalls first seeing The West Cork Mountains (1949) at Reid’s retrospective organised by the Arts Council in 1974 and that the ‘stroke of searing yellow paint atop the mountains smote me to the heart’ (9). The work belonged to William O’Sullivan, librarian of Trinity College Dublin, but Murphy vowed then that if it ever came up for sale, he would try to buy it. In 2001 he realised that ambition and acquired this work which he thought ‘had magic its makeup’ (10). Dr Riann Coulter(1) Patrick Murphy, A Passion for Collecting: A Memoir by Patrick J Murphy, Hinds, Dublin, 2012, p. 113.(2) Murphy, A passion for Collecting, 2012, p. 69-70.(3) Murphy, A passion for Collecting, 2012, p.115.(4) Hilda van Stockum, Dublin art school in the 1920s (part 1), Irish Times, 6 March 1985)(5) Brian Fallon, ‘Sophisticated Primitive’ Irish Arts Review, Autumn 2019 Vol. 36., No. 3 , p. 75. (6) Fallon, p. 76. (7) Nano Reid interviewed by Martin Dillon, BBC Northern Ireland, 1974, hand written transcript in Reid Archives, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda. (8) Murphy, p. 166-167.(9) Murphy, p. 331-332.(10) Murphy, p. 331-332.
