Artists Commentary:

A Bloom for Molly

This original Watercolour painting is a play on the name of one of the leading characters in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

Some say that the model of Molly was partly based on the character of Joyce’s wife, Nora Barnacle, from Galway, in the West of Ireland. Nora was a chambermaid at Finns Hotel in Dublin when Joyce met her and fell instantly in love.

He saw her on the street and asked her for a date. She thought that he was a foreign sailor and promptly refused to turn up! Joyce wrote her a beautiful note and they met a few days later on Thursday 16th June 1904. He was to immortalize that date as Bloomsday. ©