MacKinnon, Sine, 1901–1996

Les vieilles maisons de la pêche — © the copyright holder. Image credit: Homerton College, University of Cambridge

Sine MacKinnon (1901–1996)

Homerton College, University of Cambridge

Painter, especially of French landscapes and some pictures with a Surrealist tinge, using a distinctive palette. She was born in Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland, and was a star pupil of Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1918–20 and 1921–4, her early work showing its influence. Muirhead Bone admired her pictures, and his son Stephen and his wife, Mary Adshead, were friends. Sine (pronounced Shawna) was encouraged to move to Paris by her mother, where she lived in Montparnasse, encountered such painters as Matisse, Utrillo and Dufy, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited. Returned to London periodically where she was a prolific exhibitor, having a first solo show at Goupil Gallery in 1928, was taken up by Reid and Lefevre and also exhibited at Tooth, Fine Art Society, Redfern Gallery, NEAC and elsewhere.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)

Biography on Wikipedia

Art History Research net (AHR net)

Sine Mackinnon was born Selina Mairi Sine MacKinnon in Newcastle, County Down, Ireland on 11 February 1901 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London under Henry Tonks (1862-1937) from 1918 to 1920 and from 1921 to 1924. She later also attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

She worked as a painter from the mid-1920s. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Goupil Gallery in London in 1928. During her long career as an artist her work was also shown at Colnaghi & Co. Galleries, Fine Art Society, Grosvenor Gallery, Lefevre Gallery, Leicester Gallery, New English Art Club, the London Group, Redfern Gallery, Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery, and the Society of Women Artists in London; Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Manchester City Art Gallery; the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; and at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.

Mackinnon travelled extensively in Europe and the USA. She also visited Mosambique. In 1931 she married to Rupert Granville Fordham (1898-1974), an art dealer and lived in Paris for many years. She died in Maisons-Laffitte, Ile-de-France, a suburb of Paris, on 6 October 1996.

_{Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)}

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