A view of the Irish coast

'A view of the Irish coast' 1914 is a painting from early in Margaret Preston’s career when the artist was known by the name Rose MacPherson. Preston was living in England between 1913 and 1919 and during this time (and throughout the war years) spent substantial periods outside of London, painting in country villages such as Bunmahon (then Bonmahon) in Ireland, Bibury in Gloucestershire, Pentewan in Cornwall and Newtown Abbot in Devon. On two long summer trips to Bunmahon in 1914–15 Preston taught over 20 fee paying female students painting and printmaking.

Preston travelled to Bunmahon with her companion and fellow artist Gladys Reynell in March 1914 and stayed for eight months. They were joined by New Zealand born artist Edith Collier, who had been a pupil of Preston’s, and all three worked together producing portraits, still-life and landscapes in a range of media. Preston and Reynell returned with 21 art students in 1915, painting and sketching until a prohibition on depicting the coastline was enacted in response to the First World War.

During her 1914 summer school in Bunmahon, Preston emphasised to her students the modernist compositional principles of reduction and design that she had studied in the work of the British and French post-impressionists and Japanese printmaking. These teachings were reinforced by the qualities of her own works from this period. In 'A view of the Irish coast' (perhaps a demonstration piece for her students), Preston captures the village landscape in creamy impasto, rendering the coast’s bright light in tints of white, brown and grey. The humble village homes lend to a modernist simplification of forms as triangular rooves and flat-plane walls. The village road, traversed by a woman in green, leads the eye to breaking waves and open sea.