Sarah Purser — The Woman Who Shaped Irish Art
Irish Artist · 1848–1943
Sarah Purser
Portrait painter, patron and powerhouse — one of the most influential figures in the history of Irish art.
Le Petit Déjeuner (1881) — painted in her Paris years, and now a highlight of the National Gallery of Ireland.
The Story
Sarah Purser was a brilliant portrait painter — and then something rarer still: the organiser, patron and power-broker who did more than almost anyone to shape modern Irish art. Sharp, funny and formidably capable, she once said of her portrait career that she "went through the British aristocracy like the measles."
She was born on 22 March 1848 at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin. She was schooled at the Moravian institute at Montmirail in Switzerland, then trained in Dublin and at the Académie Julian in Paris, alongside Louise Breslau and Marie Bashkirtseff, and by the 1880s had built one of the busiest and most sought-after portrait practices in the country, capturing Ireland's intellectual, political and social leaders with psychological precision and real elegance. Her father's milling business had failed in 1873, and painting became her living rather than her pastime. She exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy for some fifty years. In 1901 she organised a joint exhibition of John Butler Yeats and Nathaniel Hone, and invited a young dealer named Hugh Lane to it — the visit that set his gallery in motion.
In 1903 she founded An Túr Gloine (The Tower of Glass), the co-operative studio that drove the revival of Irish stained glass and trained a generation of makers — among them Michael Healy and Evie Hone. She ran it for nearly forty years. It transformed the country's applied art, and it made Ireland an internationally recognised centre of stained glass. Its founding rule was that each window be the work of one artist, who made the sketch and cartoon and painted every morsel of glass.
From 1911 her salons at Mespil House drew Dublin's intelligentsia, and in 1924 she founded the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, helping secure major works for the nation. That same year she became the first woman elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, having been made an honorary member in 1890 and an associate in 1923. In 1928 she persuaded the government to hand Charlemont House to Dublin as a permanent home for the Hugh Lane collection, and lived to see it open in 1933. She died in Dublin on 7 August 1943, aged 95 — a great painter, and the closest thing Irish art has ever had to a founding matriarch.
The full account of how one painter rebuilt the institutions of Irish art — the Tower of Glass, the Second Tuesdays at Mespil House, the Friends, and Charlemont House — is in Sarah Purser: the woman who built Irish art's institutions.
Timeline
- 1848 — Born 22 March at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin.
- 1873 — Her father's business fails; she turns professional.
- 1901 — Organises the Yeats–Hone exhibition that brings Hugh Lane to Irish art.
- 1878 — Studies at the Académie Julian, Paris.
- 1880s–90s — Becomes Ireland's leading society portraitist.
- 1903 — Founds An Túr Gloine, the Tower of Glass stained-glass studio.
- 1924 — First woman elected a full member of the RHA (honorary 1890, associate 1923); founds the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.
- 1928–33 — Secures Charlemont House for the Hugh Lane collection.
- 1943 — Dies 7 August in Dublin, aged 95.
Her Dublin
The city she painted, ran and enriched. Click a pin for the places that made her a power in Irish art.
An Túr Gloine · the site of Mespil House · the National Gallery of Ireland.
Featured Works
Collector's Guide
Her Paris-era masterpiece Le Petit Déjeuner is the essential Purser. For the portraitist of literary Ireland, her Portrait of Jack B. Yeats is a must, and her Roger Casement carries real historical weight. The tender A Lady Holding a Rattle shows her lighter, domestic side. Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection.
The Purser Lover's Gift Guide
Three ways into her world, at three price points.
- A Lady Holding a Rattle — art print · from €60
- Portrait of Kathleen Behan — art print · from €70
- Le Petit Déjeuner — art print · from €75
Discover Similar Artists
John Lavery — the great society portraitist of the same era. · William Orpen — Dublin's master draughtsman. · Sarah Cecilia Harrison — fellow pioneering woman portraitist.