122
109. Gabriel Hayes (1909–1978)
Christmas Eve
Linocut, 12.5 X 10 cm, signed
and inscribed with title
Fig. 44. Gabriel Hayes
Aviation Panel
For this part of the exhibition we need you to go outside the building and go around the corner
where youwill see Gabriel Hayes’s finest work from 1942 on the outside of the Department of In-
dustry and Commerce building on Kildare Street.The panels depict various industries such as the one
here representing the Aviation Industry. Other industries depicted are Shipbuilding,Tobacco,shoe,ce-
ment,pottery,iron and steel and the construction of Ardnacrusha. She completed these panels in-situ
suspended in a wooden cage 23 metres from the ground.
Gabriel Hayes studied Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and in France and Italy. She won the RDS
prize for sculpture in 1934. She undertook numerous commissions around the country including the
life sized stations for Galway Cathedral which took her twelve years to complete.
Sculpture during the period
Although several of the women included in this exhibition took modeling classes with
John Hughes and Oliver Sheppard due to there being no foundry in Ireland and
the prohibitive cost of casting abroad, very few carried on in this area in the first 70
years of this study. There were Rosamund Praeger and Angela Antrim working in the
North and Gabriel Hayes undertaking commissions in the South. Melanie le Brocquy
showed great promise in the early 1940's but gave up for twenty years while rearing
her family . On the domestic scene Hilary Heron emerged and was joined in the
1950’s by Imogen Stuart and Gerda Frömel who both moved here from Germany .
