Biography
The Irish landscape artist, figure painter and portraitist Nano Reid was born in Drogheda, County Louth. In 1920, she won a scholarship to study fine art painting and drawing at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art - now the National College of Art and Design - under Harry Clarke. At the time, she was - in the words of fellow student Hilda van Stockum - "a fierce redhead... uncompromising and looking for truth". In 1925 she started showing at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), submitting a total of 42 canvases until the late 1960s. In 1928, she went to Paris and enrolled briefly at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, after which she spent a year in London studying fine art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Bernard Meninsky.
She returned to Ireland in 1931 and once more began exhibiting her landscape painting at the RHA.
In 1950, with Norah McGuinness, Nano Reid represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. This was followed by the Exhibition of Contemporary Irish Art in Aberystwyth (1953), and the Mostra Internazionale di Bianco e Nero in Lugano (1956), the Guggenheim International Award Exhibition in New York (1960) and the Twelve Irish Painters show in New York (1963).
In 1974, the Arts Council and the Northern Ireland Arts Council staged a major retrospective of Nano Reid's artworks. She died in Drogheda in 1981.Retrospectives for Nano Reid were held at Taylor Galleries in Dublin (1984), Droichead Arts Centre in Drogheda (1991), and at Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar, County Mayo (1999).
An individual, expressionistic artist, Nano Reid is acknowledged to be one of the finest Irish woman painters of twentieth-century visual art in Ireland. Her works are represented in many public collections throughout Ireland.
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