Every new artistic genius must be judged according to the aesthetic which he, himself, brings. — Heine
Each work of art is a complete entity existing in its own right and by its own particular logic. It has its own reality and is independent of any particular creed or theory as a justification for its existence. This is not to say that artistic development may be considered as a self-sufficient process unrelated to social reality, because art is always concerned with the deeper and fundamentally human things; and any consideration of art is a consideration of humanity. But it does mean that we cannot apply the principles and logic of the past to a new work of art and hope to understand it. The eternal verities with which the artist is concerned do not change, but our conception of art does, as does our conception of form, and these must be extended if we are to understand fully and basically the meaning of a new work.
It is a complex matter, but the elemental principles are always simple. The mass of modern art theory that developed around the fantastic changes of this century's painting can be largely ignored; only one or two fundamental principles are important. Probably most important in the new aesthetics from the painter's point of view was the statement of Degas, seventy years ago, in his unheeded advice to the Impressionists. He spoke then of a "Transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory... It is very well to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what one has retained in one's memory." Amongst the Impressionist he stands as the most significant painter relevant to modern art. This attitude, and all it implies, underlines the work of practically every painter of importance since 1900. Ultimately, it meant that the day of stage props and models was gone, and that imagination was recognised as the most important quality in an artist. Gertrude Stein records the astonishment Picasso produced by his first pictures without models. It was the beginning of a great freedom for the painter; it revolutionised the entire approach to subject. Beginning with this, the emphasis shifted from representation, and the artist was free to modify or even completely change appearance according to compositional needs. Even painters working in a tradition very different to the Ingres-Degas school were fundamentally affected by it. Bonnard worked completely from memory and composed his pictures in the studio from the slightest sketches. And to-day, after over half a century of revolution and upheaval in the arts, is it this principle which sets modern painting apart from the false traditions which were rejected, including, of course, defunct Impressionism? It is directly in this tradition of draughtsmanship allied with the freed imagination which Nano Reid works. I do not wish to imply that she studies or is even directly influenced by Degas as a painter. What I speak of is a simple fundamental element in the modern artist's approach to subject which, though rooted in French tradition, is not particularly the property of any school. In Ireland there is no tradition of painting. Nano Reid began to work at a time when the first impact of modern art had subsided in Europe. Cubism had already been left behind by its originators and had passed into the hands of the imitators, and young students were turning, without exception, to Paris. Even German Expressionism was under the shadow of the French achievements. The notable thing about the approach of Nano Reid was that she instinctively avoided the too strong, too near influence of Paris, and began with pure and firmly realised preoccupation with drawing, with insistence on line and structure. It is this element, coupled with the freedom of her approach to subject that, places her, I believe, in the great tradition of Ingres-Degas-Lautrec and Picasso (who will always be remembered as a draughtsman above all). It is important that we should understand this basis on which her work is built. Among Irish painters, she is outstanding for her draughtsmanship, and her vitality, so often praised, is rarely understood as existing by virtue of this passionate insistence on the structure of her subject.
Nano Reid was born in Drogheda and came to Dublin to study at the School of Art. Three years later she went to Paris and survived her student days there without falling a victim to the easy seduction of imitative painting after the French manner. Then, after studying in London, she gave her first exhibition in 1933. There is little more to say about this early period. She drew incessantly. Her approach was distinguished by the fact that she was concerned not with the production of pictures as such, but with the struggle to express a reality in paint which was a personal, a painter's reality. It is necessary to stress her concern with drawing, because it has its roots in her essential conception of visual reality. In so far as it is concerned with truth that goes beyond appearance and form, art is transcendental. The consciousness of this is often a snare for the painter who is led by a false preoccupation with some literary or intellectual conception of reality into a time-conscious literary form. Nano Reid realised with the instinct of a painter that for her the whole truth existed in the head, the body, the structure of life: it lay there revealed in the form, the line, a timeless and profound reality. It was a difficult struggle for the young painter who was gradually finding out that nobody else's vision could be substituted for her own. She had a great personal honesty and a great humility in her attitude, and the slow development of her style represents heroic and intense work. In 1933, the year of her first show, the real struggle for personal expression was just beginning. She herself considers this exhibition to have been unimportant and premature. At this point, though her drawing was highly developed, she had not yet discovered the freedom that would enable her to really paint.
New knowledge is only useful in so far as it opens up new vistas for the imagination, and no more so than the old forms which the artist must understand only in order to reject. Nano Reid discovered the liberation she needed in the year after her first show, in the work of an impressive Belgian painter who exhibited in Dublin after two years painting in this country. I have no hesitation in saying that I consider Nano Reid to be the finer artist. It is strange that after Paris and London, with the violent atmosphere of artistic change in both cities, she should encounter, back in Dublin, the work that was to set the spring and give beginning to her painting. But so it was, and it is significant that she did not merely paint pseudo-Howet pictures and work her way out of the influence. In a way it was scarcely an influence for her, but a revelation. Her reaction shows that already she possessed a deep personal vision, and knew that whatever aid she might receive in the expression of it would not come in the form of direct derivation. She thought, on looking at Marie Howet's work, not 'this is what I want to paint' but 'it is with a freedom such as this that I wish to paint.' Therein lay the real value of Marie Howet for Nano Reid. Of the former I may say in passing that her approach to painting was fundamentally expressionistic. She was concerned with more than either the creation of impression or of pattern. At her best, she could invest a landscape with a strongly personal mood and convey really deep feeling. She was an original artist who saw things more in terms of line than colour.
It is difficult to give an exact account of the period immediately following. It is marked by a consistent development of style that is scarcely paralleled outside a handful of the greater artists of our day. Apart from Picasso (who is partly guilty of being what Wyndham Lewis has called him; a great eclectic), such consistency and purposefulness have marked the development of all great artists. It is highly remarkable in our own J.B. Yeats.
Looking now at the picture of this early period, it seems as if her development followed a peculiar logic of its own. One can feel in the general construction of her paintings the germ of her now mature style. It was about this time that circumstances forced Nano Reid to attempt a living by portrait painting, thus complicating her whole existence as a painter by the introduction of the most disastrous discouragement of all, the unsympathetic and exacting patron. But it was inevitable that, painting for a public who want flattery and not portraiture, she could not continue. The final crux came when a sitter demanded money back; and so ended her one unsuccessful effort to compromise with commerce. Also, she had the not unexpected experience of having five submitted pictures thrown out of the Academy Exhibition. Amongst these were portraits, and a notable academician informed her that a head was an object surrounded by light, and she showed no highlights! But Nano Reid was not concerned with light. The Impressionists had said sufficient about that, and in her concept of reality, highlights were purely accidental and superficial, and however indicative of shape or texture, had no importance in her insistence on structure. One is again reminded of Degas' comment on the Impressionists when he said they were slaves to the accidents of nature. In 1936 she exhibited once more. It was this exhibition that revealed the beginning of her real painting. She commanded attention for the vigour and strength of her work and was recognised as a significant artist. In any case, this was the beginning, and from then on she worked with a greater intensity and a more rigorous integrity than even before. To say simply that she worked hard is to leave out of account the most difficult aspect of the progress she achieved in the next few years. One must remember the nature of her essential problems; she was concerned with real seeing, and not simply the nature of objects in themselves, but in the complex relation of things to each other, either in landscape or in interior. I may say that only those who have themselves experienced the tortuous nature of such work can appreciate the gigantic and yet minute development in Nano Reid's painting. Working with courage and great self-criticism, she progressed slowly after the first few years of initial discovery. In 1938, she exhibited in New York. Later, her work was to be seen in London at the Redfern and St George's Galleries, and of course always in Dublin at group shows, and in Victor Waddington's.
But recognition was slow to develop real recognition. Her vitality and originality commanded attention, and, for those who look, her influence may be seen in other important contemporary Irish painters. Tributes from well-known artists like Liam O'Flaherty and John Betjeman, although they drew attention to her work, did not show any appreciation of the really important aspects of her art. Often she had been judged by the standards of painters whose concept of art is wholly different, whose approach to the art is literary and poetic as compared with the much more primal and real attitude of Nano Reid. This is not an attempt to invalidate their work in the exposition of hers, but to point out the profound divergence between them. To some degree, they approached painting as a form through which they could express an outlook, a message, a poetry. With Nano Reid, the essential quality of her work is that it is a painting first, and her poetry is the pure poetry of paint. Outside of the finished picture her painting never existed; within the canvas it exists, a separate entity, a new reality on its own right and by its own original logic.
Throughout her career, Nano Reid has held exhibitions at more or less regular intervals in Dublin, and her position as an Irish painter is secure. But much more important than her merit relative to Irish painters is her position by general European standards. Seeing her work in London at St George's Galleries, one is truck by the tremendous force of her composition. Surrounded entirely by English and Continental work, she seems to emerge with a profound realisation of structure, whether in figure or landscape, which is all the more astonishing since she is a woman. An essential part of her power is a deep understanding of tonal values. She has been accused, in a silly way, of being doleful, because of the sombre quality of her previous work. To-day her painting is becoming more lyrical, less hard, less calligraphic, although still conceived in line.
The painting Men Tarring a Roof, not illustrated here, shows her previous insistence on the lines of her composition. It is essentially a massive conception, and captures the structure of her subject. The opposition of the planes of the roofs and the left space of the street create a strong feeling for the actual scene as it existed. It is a profound thought that in getting at the reality of the structure of a scene, one inevitably produces this individual atmosphere of the place. This is even more clearly demonstrated in portraiture. Nano Reid does not begin a portrait with any ideas about the person she draws. She is concerned with the head, its existence as a structure with certain characteristics. She is so much concerned with this that her portraits are inevitably deep studies of character and personality. The head, the face, the lines and features, contain everything for the painter who understands well enough to put it down. The portrait reproduced here is one of her late works. It is fluent and colourful, showing her thorough understanding of tone. Her last exhibition, a few years ago, included three outstanding portraits and at that time she still conceived her heads in strong, deep lines and in deep, subtly balanced tone. A comparison between these and the present, so much more lyrical work, shows how the painting has progressed from the stage where one could feel the very elemental structure on the canvas, to a style where, as in Portrait of a Young Man, the structure is more in the nature of a strong base for a lyrical conception. Her portraits are always deep, psychological studies, full of meaning, but their real value lies in the fact that they are beautiful paintings. Her portraiture, in particular, marks her as a great draughtsman.
Also reproduced here is a painting which has a great significance in her recent development. It is only recently that Nano Reid has painted Drogheda town itself. The brilliant canvas, bought by the Haverty Trust at the Living Art Exhibition of 1949, was a most exciting study of Drogheda from a hill. Now there are several more pictures of the town itself. Boyne Bridge and Gulls shows a view, through a window, on to the Boyne. It is painted in vivid colours, but with a masterly control of values. It is a small canvas but there is a sweep and precision about the proportions that make it suitable to any scale. I consider it a significant picture because it combines the two elements of her work which seem to be merging more surely in a mature command of colour and composition. The structure is evident and powerful but the colour (and even in the reproduction, the tone shows how balanced and subtle it is) is equally important as a force in conveying the atmosphere of the scene. Her watercolours have for some time shown this new phase of colour. With her unusual understanding of tone values, it is evident that she will make a great colourist.
There are other aspects of Nano Reid's art which deserve consideration: her line drawings, and watercolours, and her mural paintings in the Four Provinces House. But it is evident that her enthusiasm and life are stronger than ever and the vigour and power of her work increase. Everything she paints shows a new searching and a new discovery. Recent illustrations in lino-cut show a new interesting facet of her activity. She works to-day with all the energy and fire that marked her early painting and drew so much comment on the vitality of her brushwork and composition. As a painter, she is still young; her attitude is marked by a modesty and a determination that make one feel she is always just beginning. Such freshness in maturity is again a mark of her greatness. In Ireland, we are inclined to think of our painters as particularly 'Irish', and to readjust our attitude in considering continental or English artists. There is no especial value in attempting to say how great Nano Reid may be in the Irish scene, but one can say, without pretension, that she has her place in European painting.
— Nano Reid, by Patrick Swift, Envoy, March 1950
Later that year Nano Reid was selected to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale
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Note: many of the reproductions displayed here are of poor quality
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