28
Some female artists in Ireland were more involved than others in social and political
events in the turbulent times of the early 20th century. Kathleen Fox (1880-1963)
returned to Dublin in 1916 after four years in Europe, and witnessed and recorded some
of the events of the Easter Rising first hand. She had studied at the Metropolitan School
of Art from 1903, where she became a protégée and later assistant of William Orpen, and
got to know Constance Gore-Booth (Countess Markievicz) and Willie Pearse (brother of
Pádraig) while there. She sketched at the scene as Countess Markievicz and her 118 fellow
rebels were surrendering to British troops outside the Royal College of Surgeons, St.
Stephen’s Green. Conscious of the existing political tension, she completed the painting
in secret and then sent it to a friend in New York for safekeeping
10
. A further example of
her skill in documenting real events can be seen in
Ruins of the Four Courts (1922)
which
shows this familiar and important building with the dome missing and gutted buildings
flanking it, an important record of a seminal time in Irish history. Estella Solomons
(1882-1968), a fellow pupil of Orpen at the Metropolitan School, was a committed
nationalist who sympathised with anti-Treaty forces during the Easter Rising and Civil
War. Her studio in Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) became a regular rendezvous for
Dublin’s artistic and political community, including Arthur Griffith and Horace Plunket.
She was a member of Cumann na mBan, an Irish republican women’s paramilitary
organisation, and her studio was often raided, leading her to burn portraits of those she
harboured, for fear they could be used as evidence against her
11
.
The exhibition also celebrates artists who were born elsewhere but chose to identify with,
live and exhibit in Ireland in these formative years. Elizabeth Rivers (1903-1964) was
born in Hertfordshire but said she “only felt conscious of being English in war time”
12
. She spent five years studying under Sickert at the Royal Academy Schools and later
three years in Paris with André Lhote from 1931, so followed a path already trodden by
several notable female Irish artists. She lived on Inis Mór for 7 years from 1936 and in
1946 met Evie Hone with whom she worked until Hone’s death in 1955, particularly
on the large commission of 18 light windows for Eton College. Her work across media
including oil paintings, book illustrations and wood engravings, is characterised by an
emphasis on line, sensitive observation of figures and a strong feeling of atmosphere. Her
contribution to modernism in Ireland has been overshadowed by her contemporaries
Hone, McGuinness and Reid but she was noted for bringing a refreshing view of the
Western landscape she grew to know so well, one removed from the sentimentality of
other, mostly male, artists in the mid 20th century.
10
Finucane, P. and Connolly, M. Journeys through Line and Colour, p.20, University of Limerick 2010
11
Coulter, R. A Meeting of Minds: Russell, Solomons and O’Sullivan. p.100-105. In: Irish Arts Review (2006), Vol. 23,
No.1
12
Kennedy, B. ‘Elizabeth Rivers 1903-1964: A Retrospective View’ exhibition catalogue. Gorry Gallery, Dublin (1989)
Cont. p34
