Life
1848-1943 [Sarah Henrietta]; b. 22 March, Kingston (Dun Laoghaire), Co.
Dublin; ed. Switzerland andthe Metropolitan Sch. of Art, Dublin; entered Academie
Julian, Paris, 1879; returned Dublin and set up studio, attracting commissions
by her interpretation of the Continental style and through friendship
with Gore-Booths (‘I went through the aristocracy like the measles’);
earned £30,000 from portrait painting; exhibited RHA; HRHA, 1890, ARHA,
1923, RHA, 1925; friend of Michael Davitt, whose portrait she exhibited
successfully in London, 1892; made wealthy by shrewd investment in Guinness
when it became public stock company; mounted important show of works by
J..B. Yeats and Nathaniel Hone [the younger] resulting in Hugh Lane’s
patronage; founded An Túr Gloine, at 24 Upr. Pembroke St., 1903,
where Evie Hone, Michael Healy, et al. worked; fnd. Friends of the National
Collections of Ireland, 1924, to secure funds and press for return of
Lane pictures from London; entertained literary and artistic Dublin with
her brother John (TCD Prof. of Medicine), at Mespil House, which they
rented; persuaded Cosgrave to hand over Charlemont House for Municipal
Gallery in 1930; d. 7 Aug.; there is a portrait in brown chalk by Linlian
Davison in NGI. BREF DIB DIH.
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Works
Irish portraits, Samuel Ferguson by Sarah Purser [sic] signed 1888; Maud
Gonne by Sarah Purser; John Kells Ingram by Sarah Purser; also Sarah Purser
by Mary Swanzy; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition [Catalogue]
(Ulster Mus. 1965); NOTE, several of her portraits are displayed in the
North Dining-room at TCD Senior (Common Room).
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Criticism
John O’Grady, The Life and Work of Sarah Purser (Blackrock:
Four Courts 1996), 288pp., incl. catalogue of 554 works.
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Notes
A. N. Jeffares, W B Yeats, A New Biography (1988), p.158, In the
Abbey one evening [Miss Horniman] and Sarah Purser could hardly be got
out of the theatre, in eager converse in the Hall, agreeing that Lady
Gregory was ‘too stupid to be allowed to live’ (as reported
in Lady Gregory’s Journal, p.350, on Yeats’s account
of it.)
Gorry Gallery, exhib. ‘Drawings and Watercolours, Sarah Purser 1848-1943’ (23 May-3 June 1993); inc. John Butler Yeats, pencil.
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974) gives account of Hyde’s visits at Sarah Purser’s (p.95.)
The peremptory rejection of paintings by John B. Yeats at the RHA in 1901 led to Sarah Purser mounting at her own expense and exhibition of his and Nathaniel Hone’s, 21 Oct.-3 Nov., at rooms of Royal Soc. of Antiquaries, St Stephen’s Green. Yeats’s contributions included his portrait of John O’Leary. (See S. B. Kennedy, Irish Art & Modernism, 1991.)
Commented to Maud Gonne in 1907 of her son Seaghan (Sean MacBride) during a visit in Paris, ‘Aren’t you afraid that he’ll grow up to be a murderer?’ See R. F. Foster, Life of Yeats (1997).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)