The Chair: Daghda Tuatha de Danann
1955
Oil on canvas
Private collection
The painting's title and the inscriptions within it reveal its
rish source material. The Tuatha de Danann-"childrer
of Danu," the universal mother aoddess-were the thira
Divine Dynasty of Irish lore. Daghda was their father
deity, who specialized in Druid magic.
'The ancient Irish venerated divine forces in all aspects
of nature, in particular the sun god as a life-giver
and promoter of fertility," Carrington scholar Salomon
Grimberg explains. "The Chair: Daghda Tuatha de
Danann brings together-in the image of a throne
decorated with references to the creative power of the
sun--the fertility of Daghda ... Tuathan myths, and the
glory of the children of Danu. The sun, like a flower with
its petal-like rays, rests atop its high back, leading our eye
to various solar references adorning the chair, including
a bird rising from the sun, and a spiked wheel on the seat.
. . Swirling mist emerging from under the chair travels
upward, over two disembodied hands that play with the yel
unrevealed future in the form of an egg; on the table, the
apparition of a white rose is growing out of another egg."
The egg is a ubiquitous symbol of birth and transformation
central in myriad cultures and occult beliefs. It appears
often within Carrington's oeuvre
