Born: 11 March 1863, Ireland
Died: 16 July 1955
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Mary Catherine Guinness
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Rebecca Minch. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Guinness, Mary Catherine (‘May’) (1863–1955), painter, was born 11 March 1863 in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, third among seven children and eldest of three daughters of Thomas Hosea Guinness, solicitor, of Tibradden House, Rathfarnham, and his wife Mary, only daughter and heiress of Charles Davis of Coolmanna, Co. Carlow. She was a direct descendant of Arthur Guinness. Educated at home by French and German governesses and at Mrs Power’s school, she left in order to teach her younger brothers and sisters. This burden of family responsibility meant that it was only in her early thirties that she could begin to pursue her interest in art. In 1894 she travelled with the watercolourist Mildred Ann Butler to Newlyn in Cornwall to study under the Irish artist Norman Garstin (1847–1926). She exhibited for the first time at the RHA in 1897 and continued to do so till 1911.
Between 1902 and 1903 she spent time painting in Florence before going to Paris in 1905. There the early work of Henri Matisse and the Fauves (exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1905), with its emphasis on the expressive qualities of colour and line, made what was to be a lasting impact. The freedom of brushwork is clear in works such as ‘Procession at Josselin’ (NGI) and ‘Cathedral at Diest’ (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane), early examples of this development. In painting these works in Brittany c.1905–7 she was following in the footsteps of many Irish artists such as Walter Osborne and Roderic O’Conor. Between 1905 and 1922 she studied with Fauvist artists such as Kees van Dongen and Hermen Anglada-Camarosa.
In 1915 she left Dublin to enlist in the French army as a nurse. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1917 for bravery during the battle of Verdun and, after the war, the Médaille de la Reconnaisance Française. After the war she spent each winter in Paris, where she worked with the cubist painter André Lhote (1885–1962) between 1922 and 1925. Lhote taught a number of other Irish artists, such as Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, who were to become close friends of Guinness. The more austere, structured works of these years shows the marked influence made by cubism. One of her most successful works of this period is ‘Still life’ (c.1925–30; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin). In January 1925 she held a solo exhibition in Paris at the Galerie Visconti. By the early 1930s she had returned to her earlier lyrical, painterly fauvist style. This more spontaneous approach seems to have been better suited to her temperament than the more cerebral style of cubism, though it was out of a synthesis of the two that her own style evolved. The influence of Marie Laurencin (1883–1956) is also evident in later works such as ‘Outside a Paris cafe’ (Limerick City Art Gallery). She herself characterised her style as one of stylisation, where she sought to make rhythmic arrangements of line and colour.
Establishing a chronology for her work is problematic. This stems from the fact that she never dated her works and tended to exhibit paintings from different periods in any one exhibition, with the result that catalogues cannot be used to achieve any greater accuracy. For this reason her works tend to be grouped within general periods: pre-1922, 1922–5, and post-1925. Further complications arise from the fact that she tended to assume the styles of other artists rather than developing a truly individual artistic vision. Nevertheless, her openness to avant-garde innovations is remarkable for one of her generation – she was a contemporary of William Orpen and John Lavery. Indeed, one of the defining features of her artistic career was her exposure to influences from abroad; she was an intrepid traveller into her seventies and amassed a small but choice collection of modernist paintings, which included works by Matisse and Picasso. In this way she was an important channel for such ideas for the younger generation in Ireland, and was an inspirational figure in a circle that included Jellett, Hone, Grace Henry, and Mary Swanzy. It was through such personal contacts that she exerted her greatest influence. Though she had a private, retiring personality and was reclusive towards the end of her life, the path of her career and artistic output are proof of a quietly indomitable character.
Returning to Ireland after the first world war, she lived at the family home in Tibradden. On the death of her mother (1925) she moved to the annexe of Marlay House, Rathfarnham, the home of Evie Hone. In 1933 she moved to the dower house at Tibradden, St Thomas’s, where she lived till her death. She remained active as a painter through the 1930s and continued to exhibit in Dublin and London. She died unmarried in Dublin 16 July 1955. A memorial exhibition of her work was held in Dawson Hall, Dawson St., Dublin, in the following year.