May Guinness was an Irish painter, noted as “the first practising artist to introduce a modernist sensibility into Irish art”.
Guinness was a member of the Water Colour Society of Ireland from 1892. She exhibited with the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1897, continuing to show with them until 1911.
A chronology of her work is difficult to establish as she never dated her works. Therefore her work is grouped into three periods: pre-1922, 1922 to 1925, and post-1925. This is further complicated by the fact she often assumed the style of other artists, but this openness seemed to make her work unique in Ireland.
