Barton is born in Dublin on April 21, 1856. Her father is a lawyer from Rochestown, County Tipperary, and her mother’s family is from County Galway. Educated privately, she is a liberal in social affairs. Her interests include horse racing. She is cousins with sisters Eva Henrietta and Letitia Marion Hamilton. She begins exhibiting her broad-wash watercolour paintings with the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) in 1872. She and her sister Emily visit Brussels in 1875, where they receive drawing tuition in drawing and fine art painting under the French artist Henri Gervex. There, along with her close friend Mildred Anne Butler, she begins to study figure painting and figure drawing.
In 1879, Barton joins the local committee of the Irish Fine Art Society. Afterward she trains at Paul Jacob Naftel‘s art studio in London. She, like Butler, studies under Naftel. In 1882, she exhibits her painting Dead Game, at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). In 1884, she exhibits at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). Later, she shows at the Japanese Gallery, the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. In 1893, she becomes an associate member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, attaining full membership in 1911.
Barton’s watercolours and townscapes become well known in both Dublin and London. This is helped by her illustrations in books of both cities including Picturesque Dublin, Old and New by Francis Farmer and her own book Familiar London.
(Pictured: “A rest in rotten row” – 1892 watercolour by Rose Maynard Barton. The painting shows a nurse and child resting on Rotten Row, Hyde Park, London.)
Drew is the son of the Rev. Thomas Drew, son of a Limerick grocer, and Isabella Drew (née Dalton), daughter of a Dublin attorney. He is one of four sons and eight daughters of the couple, although most of the children die young. His sister, Catherine Drew, is a prominent Londonjournalist and an early champion of women’s rights.
Drew is trained under Sir Charles Lanyon before moving to work in Dublin, where he becomes principal assistant to William George Murray. In 1865, he becomes the diocesan architect of the united dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore, and from that point forward Church architecture is his principal activity. He is consulting architect for both St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
Drew marries Adelaide Anne, sister of William George Murray, in 1871.
From 1885 to 1892, Richard Orpen works with Drew as a managing assistant. Drew’s most significant work in Belfast is St. Anne’s Cathedral, completed in 1899.
Henry is born Emily Grace Mitchell at Kirktown St. Fergus, near Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on February 10, 1868. She is the ninth of ten children of the Rev. John Mitchell and Jane Mitchell (née Gardner). Lord Byron is a cousin of her maternal grandmother. She is educated at home, spending time at the family’s home in Piccadilly, where she experiences London society. After the death of her father, and the reduced circumstances she finds herself in, she leaves home in 1895 to pursue a career as an artist. The first record of her work being exhibited is with the Aberdeen Artists Society in 1896 and 1898. These paintings have not been traced since. In 1899, she leaves Scotland for the continent, visiting Holland and Belgium, studying at the Blanc‐Guerrins Academy in Brussels. She goes on to attend the Delacluze Academy in Paris. While in Paris, she meets Paul Henry, an Irish artist. The couple marries in September 1903 in London.
The Henrys live at a few different residences outside London until 1910. A small number of her works are known from this time, such as The Girl in White, which is in the collections of the Hugh Lane Gallery. This piece shows the influence of fellow artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler, whom she meets in Paris through her husband. The couple travels to Achill Island for the first time in 1910, intending to stay two-weeks, but going on to live there until 1919. During this time, she paints numerous night scenes, including Achill Cottages (Hugh Lane Gallery). One of her well-known works is Top of the Hill, on display in the Limerick City Gallery of Art, which shows a group of island women. The period spent on the island places a strain on the Henrys marriage, as she is not as happy living there.
The couple returns to Dublin in 1919 and are founding members of the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920 alongside Letitia Marion Hamilton, Mary Swanzy, and Jack Butler Yeats. The Society offers an outlet for younger Irish artists to exhibit. Five of Henry’s works are featured at the Irish Exhibition in Paris in 1922, and at a similar exhibition in Brussels in 1930.
Around 1920, Henry has a romantic association with Stephen Gwynn who is an important political, cultural and literary figure from the lost world of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ireland. During this period, she travels with Gwynn in France and Italy and later paints a number of portraits of him. Invariably, during this time, the Henrys’ marriage continues to have problems, with the couple breaking up in 1924. Her affair with Gwynn, who she depicts in two known oil paintings including The Orange Man (Limerick City Gallery of Art) and Portrait of a Man, which depicts a much more distinguished Gwynn in later life, contribute to the breakup. The couple legally separates in 1930.
Henry develops her own style through the 1920s and 1930s, spending time in France and Italy. From 1924 to 1925, she studies with André Lhote, a cubist painter who also works with Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, and Mary Swanzy. She goes on to display little of his influence in her work. She paints in Venice and in the environs of the Italian lakes, painting with the fauvist style, with free brushwork and vibrant colours. She also experiments with expressionism, which can be seen in Spring in Winter. Upon the outbreak of World War II, she returns to Ireland. She does not have a permanent residence during this period, instead stayed with friends or living in hotels. She also experiences periods of melancholy during these later years, though she continues to exhibit. Her work is regularly displayed at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), and she has solo shows at the Waddington and Dawson galleries. She is made an honorary member of the RHA in 1949.
Henry dies in Dublin on August 11, 1953, and is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery. During her career, and for a number of years after her death, she is largely overshadowed by her husband, sometimes being referred to as “Mrs. Paul Henry.” She is even omitted from Paul Henry’s two-volume autobiography. Her body of work is re-examined in the 1970s, which leads to wider public recognition and her inclusion in a number of exhibitions such as The Paintings of Paul and Grace Henry at the Hugh Lane Gallery in 1991. She is deemed to be a much bolder painter than her husband, incorporating more elements of the modernist movement, as evident in The Long Grey Road of Disting (1915). Her popularity has been growing since her rediscovery.
(Pictured: “Road to Destiny,” oil on board by Grace Henry)
Wilmer is born to Major Harold Gordon Wilmer and Alice Violet McEntire. Her father is killed at Gallipoli when she is four years old. She has a younger brother, Harold, who follows in the family military tradition and is killed in 1942. She learns her skills in the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) schools in Dublin, starting in 1926, where she wins a number of awards for her art. She is trained by Lilian Davidson who is working out of her studio in Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin. She wins the Taylor Scholarship in 1933 which sends her to the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
In 1936, Wilmer marries Dr. Brendan O’Brien, a Dublin surgeon and son of Dermod O’Brien. She and her husband settle in Dublin after working abroad for a few years. They have two sons, Dermod and Anthony, who is also an artist. Another artistic relative is Geraldine O’Brien.
In the period from the 1940s and 1950s O’Brien exhibits in Dublin with Brigid Ganly, RHA, her sister-in-law, as well as submitting works to the Society of Dublin Painters, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Water Colour Society of Ireland. She exhibits annually in the Irish Living Art Exhibition and the Oireachtas Art Exhibition. O’Brien is elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1976. She is president of the Water Colour Society of Ireland from 1962 to 1981.
Charles Brady, American-born painter who spends most of his life in Ireland, dies in Dublin on August 1, 1997.
Brady is born on July 27, 1926, in New York City, the son of Arthur Brady, an industrial hardware merchant. He is best known for small-scale paintings of still life and landscape. At the end of World War II, while serving with the United States Navy, he suffers an accident which results in his discharge. As a result of this, he has the opportunity of pursuing further study. In 1948, he enrolls at the Art Students League of New York. Founded in 1875 and distinguished by its progressive approach to art education, it is one of the most important art schools in the United States in the early twentieth century.
Initially, Brady studies design and fashion before studying fine art under John Groth and Morris Kantor. In 1949, he becomes Groth’s assistant. In 1950, his work is included in the exhibition “American Painting 1950,” held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where he is employed as a guard at the time. Around this time, he meets artists associated with abstract expressionism such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, and exhibits with them in exhibitions such as the “9th Street Show” (1951). Four years later, his first solo exhibition is held at the Urban Gallery, New York. By this time, his father, mother, and a younger brother have all died. In 1956 he decides to leave New York and spend some time in Ireland.
On his arrival, Brady bases himself in Lismore, County Waterford, where the landscapes he begins to paint are in contrast to the abstract style he had developed in New York. In May 1956, he joins his aunt and uncle on a tour that include London and Paris. He remains in Ireland until early in 1958 and during this time becomes acquainted with such figures as Camille Souter, Frank Morris and Desmond McAvock. Though he spends the next year in the United States, he soon decides to return to Ireland. In 1959 he is living in Dublin, where, along with artists such as Noel Sheridan and Patrick Pye, he is involved in founding the Independent Artists group. His work is included in the group’s first exhibition in 1960.
Also in 1960, Brady marries Eelagh Noonan, and the couple go to live in Spain. On their return to Ireland in 1961, they settle in Dún Laoghaire, where he begins to produce still lifes of objects such as envelopes and boxes painted in muted tones. Though figurative, the painterly quality of these works and the way in which they assert the flat nature of the picture plane suggest something of his experience of postwar American abstract art. Soft, hazy light, another key characteristic of his work, can also be seen in his paintings of Sandymount Strand, which might be compared with the work of Nathaniel Hone the Younger, whose work Brady had seen on his first trip to Ireland. He also works in other media, producing lithographs and, from the mid-1980s, small bronzes of such mundane objects as discarded bus tickets.
From 1976 to 1983 Brady lectures in painting at the National College of Art and Design. In 1981 he becomes a member of Aosdána and in 1994 he is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). He exhibits regularly in Ireland at venues such as the RHA. He receives a number of awards including the P. J. Carroll award at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art as well as the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal and the landscape award at the Oireachtas exhibitions of 1973 and 1989 respectively.
(From: “Brady, Charles” by Rebecca Minch, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “Charles Brady, 1967,” oil on board by Koert Delmonte)
seamus dubhghaill 