(b Dublin, 15 Feb 1882; d London, 7 July 1978). Irish painter. She studied painting c. 1898 at May Manning’s studio, where she met John Butler Yeats and Clare Marsh, and modelling under John Hughes. She exhibited a portrait at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1905 and continued to show portraits there for the next ten years. By 1906 she was in Paris, where she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi. Gertrude Stein’s collection of modern art, and particularly the work of Cézanne and Gauguin, had a lasting influence on her mature style. After her return to Dublin, she held one-woman shows in 1913 and 1919 and took part in the Salon des Indépendants in 1914 and 1918, becoming a committee member in 1920. About 1920 she helped with relief work in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, producing landscapes that she exhibited in Dublin in 1921. Her debt to Gauguin, coupled with a stylized naturalism, is evident in Samoan Scene (c. 1924; Dublin, Allied Irish Bank), painted during a visit to Honolulu and Samoa. Her deep admiration for Botticelli is evident in later works such as The Message (c. 1943–4; Dublin, Hugh Lane Mun. Gal.), an enigmatic Nativity. Her tendencies to classicism, which became even more pronounced in her late works, were combined with Cubist influences, an arch wit and idiosyncratic colouring and subject-matter. She painted until she was 96.

• Swanzy, Mary
  • Ireland, §III, 4: Painting and graphic arts, after 1900