187
Important Irish Art
,
wednesday 1st October 2014 at 6pm
198 Estella Frances Solomons
HRHA (1882-1968)
Ella Young (1867-1956)
Oil on canvas, 61 x 51cm (24 x 20”)
Provenance: From the Artist’s Studio and thence from the estate of the late Geoffrey O’Connor, Kerry
Exhibited:
Estella Solomons
Exhibition, Crawford Gallery, Cork, May/June 1986, Cat. No. 79
Ella Young (1867 - 1956) was a poet, republican and mystic who was born near Ballymena, Co. Antrim. Her family
moved to Dublin around 1880 and she graduated from RUI 1898. After learning Irish in 1902 she visited Achill Island
in 1903 to collect folklore for her friend George Russell. She became involved with the Celtic Revival with her friends
Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats amongst others.
Young joined Sinn Féin in 1912 and in 1914 was one of the founder members of Cumann na mBan. Like Solomons
she stored ammunitions at her home . She was strongly opposed to the Anglo-Irish treaty as a result of which she was
interned and she and AE never spoke again. She became a lecturer in Irish Myth and lore at the University of California
at Berkeley and lived for most of the rest of her life in Oceano ,a theosophical settlement in California where she wrote
several books .
€1,200 - 1,600
