Born: 1 July 1928, Ireland
Died: 7 May 2015
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Turlough O’Riordan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Maguire, Myra (1928–2015), artist and teacher, was born on 1 July 1928 at 36 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, the youngest child of Charles Stanley Maguire, a salesman, and his wife Margaretta Isabel (‘Daisy’; née McClure), a nurse. The family lived at 33 Cliftonville Road, Glasnevin, Dublin. Daisy hailed from Larne, Co. Antrim, though by 1911 was living on Grafton Street, Dublin; her father was as master tailor. Charles’s father Josiah had been a cycle and motor agent in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. Charles, after racing motorbikes in Dublin in the early 1920s and marrying Daisy there in 1924, later worked in Belfast for the luxury Scottish car vendors Rossleigh Motors, agents for Rolls Royce and Daimler-Benz. Myra’s brother Stanley Frederick was born in 1925, served in the British army and settled in England; their uncle was the painter Richard Maguire (1895–1965). Myra attended Hillcrest Preparatory School, Belfast, from 1933–5. The family moved to Scotland in 1935. Myra went to Ayr Grammar School for three years and in 1938 entered Ayr Academy, where she completed six years of secondary education. In 1942 she attained her grade one music diploma.
Returning to Dublin, Maguire studied (1946–50) at the National College of Art (NCA), gaining a diploma in design in industry. There she was taught by Maurice MacGonigal and Seán Keating, the latter a particular influence. She specialised in illustration and won three prizes in the Royal Dublin Society’s 1950 national art competition. (Maguire also completed a typing and shorthand course at Miss Galway’s Secretarial College).
In 1950 Maguire became a heraldic artist in the Genealogical Office, based at the College of Arms in Dublin Castle. There she deployed her skills in lettering, composition, calligraphy and as a watercolourist. Maguire produced a range of original illustrations based on her own armorial and genealogical research. She executed grants, confirmations and certificates of arms, family pedigrees and a variety of patents for organisations and bodies. The workload was especially heavy during summer months when tourists, mainly from North America, visited Dublin in large numbers and sought knowledge and confirmation of their familial origins. For many years Maguire worked closely with Edward MacLysaght and Gerard Slevin, successively chief heralds of Ireland.
In advance of the 1953 An Tóstal festival and exhibition, Dublin Corporation commissioned ninety-six shields of Irish counties and towns from the Genealogical Office. Maguire led a team of artists who designed and executed the shields, which were affixed to standards and hung from streetlamps across the city’s main thoroughfares. Maguire completed a pedigree and grant of arms that was gifted to John F. Kennedy when he visited Ireland in 1961. The combination of the arms of the paternal (Kennedy) and maternal (Fitzgerald) families was widely praised and much reproduced in the media. Maguire remained at the Genealogical Office until 1963, afterwards working part-time on various genealogical commissions and projects; in 2000 she was still undertaking occasional work for the Office of the Chief Herald, then housed in the National Library of Ireland.
After serving as an assistant teacher of commercial art at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, Dublin, for a year, in 1959 Maguire joined the NCA. She initially taught calligraphy part-time in the evenings before being appointed in 1963 as assistant lecturer in the school of design alongside Muriel Brandt. In 1974 Maguire was appointed head of the department of art and design foundation studies (as the pre-diploma course had been renamed), where she remained until her retirement in 1990. For many years she continued to deliver her popular course in calligraphy in the evenings, which did much to drive interest in the art form. Maguire implemented changes to the foundation curriculum, moving away from craft-based teaching and embracing a design-led approach. She recruited various practising artists to teach part-time and established novel core introductory courses in sculpture, painting, printmaking, textiles and design. In doing so Maguire, generous to all with her time and knowledge, ‘gave the basic grammar to a generation of Irish artists and designers’ (NCAD 250: drawings 1746–1996, 87). A committed educator and mentor who was always supportive of her students and teaching colleagues, Maguire was widely respected across what is now the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). In recognition of her significant contribution to the college, in 1988 NCAD honoured her with the personal title of professor.
Maguire’s greatest contribution to Irish art and visual design – the 243 armorial bearings and crests (colloquially ‘coats of arms’) she created for Edward MacLysaght’s Irish families: their names, arms and origins (1957) – went largely unacknowledged. Both the author and the publisher, Allen Figgis, were unable to prevent or control the widespread unauthorised reproduction of Maguire’s richly illustrated and elegantly coloured arms and crests, which comprised almost half the volume. In 1964, while visiting the Irish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, Maguire was surprised to see the entrance hall festooned with enlarged reproductions of her work. Over time she encountered unauthorised and unattributed reproductions of her armorial work on a range of Irish tourist and family history merchandise and memorabilia – posters, post cards, crockery, tea towels, key rings, maps and place mats, to name a few. Amused by the reach and longevity of this portion of her work, emblazoned on untold millions of items, Maguire was equable regarding the complete lack of payment or attribution. She later contributed colourful clan flags and coats of arms to John Grenham’s Clans and families of Ireland (1993), aimed at the American market, and to his Irish family names (1997).
As a freelancer Maguire completed commissions (arms, crests, logos, certificates and awards) for a variety of institutions, bodies and associations. These included, inter alia, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Knights of Malta, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Irish Girl Guides, Portmarnock Golf Club and the Irish School of Ecumenics. Maguire also submitted entries to postage stamp design competitions. Her adaptation of a stamp designed by Luigi Gasbarra titled ‘Europa’, marking a decade of cooperation between European postal authorities, was issued in April 1969 by An Post. Maguire’s designs were also utilised by the stamping branch of the Revenue Commissioners on various customs and excise duty, PAYE, insurance and cheque duty stamps used for taxation purposes.
Working on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Maguire composed formal letters of credence and recall for Irish ambassadorial and diplomatic postings. She also produced elegant facsimiles of the Book of Kells, the Book of Durrow and other notable Irish incunabula and manuscripts for the Department of the Taoiseach. These were gifted to visiting politicians and dignitaries, as well as to overseas institutions. Maguire was a colour consultant for James Johnson Sweeney’s Irish illuminated manuscripts of the early Christian period (1965), published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). In the 1960s she designed and commissioned elegant heraldic banners that were installed in St Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle, where Irish presidents are inaugurated.
In her work for the state, the Genealogical Office and in private commissions, Maguire pioneered the revival of the ‘edged pen’ technique for Gaelic script. Her significant contribution to the renewal of a distinctly Irish form of calligraphy drew inspiration from contemporary interest in insular majuscule (medieval script). Regarded as one of Ireland’s foremost calligraphers, she often served as a judge in competitions and did much to popularise the art form. She was a member of the Society of Scribes and Illustrators of London, and was an exhibitioner, member and trustee of the Water Colour Society of Ireland.
Among Maguire’s more notable private commissions was the ‘Book of Haughey’, commissioned by Charles Haughey. From the mid-1970s she transcribed details of visitors to and holidays on Inishvickillane, one of the Blasket Islands off Co. Kerry owned by Haughey, provided to her during visits to his residence at Kinsealy, Co. Dublin. Maguire adorned these details with decorative illustrations of the distinct birdlife of the Blasket Islands and other original artwork. This was all specially bound into a volume of morocco leather, headed by the coat of arms she had designed for Haughey when she worked at the Genealogical Office.
Maguire was the most accomplished Irish heraldic artist of the twentieth century. Interested in the presentation of the written word, she was a precise and expert calligrapher. Her artistic practice drew on her wide knowledge of literature and art. She enjoyed photographing exotic and tropical flowers and plants on her many travels, which she then painted as watercolours. Warm, frank and humorous, Maguire had a range of friends from all walks of life. She cared for both her parents in their later years; her father died in 1964 and her mother, who had been blind for many years, in 1997.
Maguire lived latterly on Leinster Road West, Rathmines, Dublin, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. She died on 7 May 2015 at Tallaght Hospital. Her funeral, on 11 May, took place at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, Dublin, and she was buried, alongside her father, in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, Dublin.