Sarah Purser

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Sarah Purser
Metropolitan School of Art, Académie Julian
Known forFirst female member of the Royal Hibernian Academy
Movementstained glass movement

Sarah Henrietta Purser RHA (22 March 1848 – 7 August 1943) was an Irish artist mainly noted for her portraiture. She was the first woman to become a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. She also founded and financially supported An Túr Gloine, a stained glass studio.[1]

Biography

Sarah Purser Commemorative Stamp 2020

Purser was born in Kingstown (now

Dungarvan, County Waterford.[2] She was one of the numerous children of Benjamin Purser, a prosperous flour miller and brewer, and his wife Anne Mallet. She was related to Sir Frederic W. Burton,[3] who was a son of Hannah Mallet. The Purser family had come to Ireland from Gloucestershire in the eighteenth century. Two of her brothers, John and Louis, became professors at Trinity College Dublin. Her niece, Olive Purser, daughter of her brother Alfred, was the first woman scholar in TCD.[4]

Until her death, Purser lived for many years in Mespil House, a Georgian mansion with beautiful plaster ceilings on Mespil Road, on the banks of the

Mount Jerome Cemetery beside her brothers John and Louis.[citation needed
]

Education

At thirteen, she attended the Moravian school, Institution Evangélique de Montmirail, Switzerland, where she learnt to speak fluent French and began painting. In 1873, her father's business failed and she decided to become a full-time painter. She attended classes at the

Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. She joined the Dublin Sketching Club, where she was later appointed an honorary member. In 1874, she distinguished herself in the National Competition. In 1878, she again contributed to the RHA, and for the next fifty years became a regular exhibitor, mainly portraits, and showed an average of three works per show.[6]

From 1878 to 1879, she studied at the Académie Julian in Paris where she met the German painter Louise Catherine Breslau,[7] with whom she became a lifelong friend.[8]

Career

Sarah Purser became wealthy through astute investments, particularly in

Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, persuading the Irish government to provide Charlemont House in Parnell Square to house the gallery.[9]

She had a studio at 11 Harcourt Terrace where she lived from 1887 to 1909.[10]

She was the second woman to sit on the Board of Governors and Guardians, National Gallery of Ireland, 1914–1943.

She was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1890; the first female Associate Member in 1923 and the first female Member in 1924.[2] In 1924, she initiated the movement for the launching of the Friends of the National Collection of Ireland.[2]

Portraiture

She worked mostly as a portraitist. Through her talent and energy, and owing to her friendship with the Gore-Booths, she was very successful in obtaining commissions, famously commenting

"I went through the British aristocracy like the measles."

When the Viceroy of Ireland commissioned her to portray his children in 1888 his choice reflected her position as the country's foremost portraitist.

In 1977, Bruce Arnold noted

"some of her finest and most sensitive work was not strictly portraiture, for example, An Irish Idyll in the
Ulster Museum, and Le Petit Déjeuner (in the National Gallery of Ireland
)."

Glass (An Túr Gloine)

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
, by Sarah Purser made in 1906: a depiction of King Cormac of Cashel

Sarah Purser financed An Túr Gloine (The Tower of Glass), a stained glass cooperative, at 24 Upper Pembroke and ran it from its inauguration in 1903 until her retirement in 1940. Michael Healy was the first of a number of distinguished recruits, such as Catherine O'Brien, Evie Hone, Wilhelmina Geddes, Beatrice Elvery and Ethel Rhind. Purser was determined the stained glass workshop should adhere to true Arts and Crafts philosophy: 'Each window is the work of one artist who makes the sketch and cartoon and selects and paints every morsel of glass him or herself'.[11]

Purser did not produce many items of stained glass herself. Most of the stained glass works were painted by other members of the cooperative, presumably under her direction. Two early works, 1904, were St. Ita for St. Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea and The Good Shepherd for St. Columba's College, Dublin. Her last stained glass work is thought to be The Good Shepherd and the Good Samaritan, 1926, for the Church of Ireland at Killucan, County Westmeath.

Legacy

Plaque at Sarah Purser's Studio, 11 Harcourt Terrace

Purser is commemorated by a plaque on Harcourt Terrace. An Post issued a commemorative stamp for her as part of a series on "Pioneering Women" in 2020.

Various portraits painted by Purser are held in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Archives relating to Sarah Purser are housed in the Centre for the Study of Irish Art, National Gallery of Ireland. An Túr Gloine archive is held in the Centre for the Study of Irish Art, National Gallery of Ireland.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-903162-40-1
    .
  2. ^ a b c O'Grady, John N. "Purser, Sarah Henrietta". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  3. ^ "Sir Frederick William Burton, Water-colour Painter - Irish Artists". www.libraryireland.com. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
  4. ^ "Welcome, Welcome Little Women: TCD's First Female Graduates". News & Alerts: The Library of Trinity College Dublin. 9 March 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  5. ^ Terence de Vere White A Fretful Midge Routledge and Kegan Paul London 1957 p.129
  6. ^ Snoddy, Theo (2002). Dictionary of Irish Artists, 20th Century, second edition. Dublin: Merlin Publishing. p. 540.
  7. ^ "Objects – Louise Catherine Breslau – Artists – National Gallery of Ireland". onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  8. ^ Breslau, Louise (1884). "Letters to Sarah Purser from Louise Catherine Breslau". catalogue.nli.ie. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  9. ISBN 9780500238844
    .
  10. ^ FUSIO. "10, 11 Harcourt Terrace, Dublin 2, DUBLIN". Buildings of Ireland. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
  11. ^ Gordon Bowe, N.; et al. (1988). Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. p. 19.

Notes

External links

4 artworks by or after Sarah Purser at the Art UK site

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