MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish Art celebrates Sarah Purser, an indomitable figure in Irish art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition examines Purser’s multifaceted role as artist, activist and collector.
For full programme of events, talks, workshops and more related to this exhibition, visit hughlane.ie/whats-on/
Sarah Purser (1848 – 1943) was a hugely influential figure in Irish artistic circles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both as an artist and as an organiser. She played an important role in the founding of Hugh Lane Gallery and helped secure Charlemont House as the gallery’s permanent home. It also marks the centenary of the founding of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which Purser established in 1924.
Sarah Purser was born in 1848 in Dún Laoghaire and studied in Switzerland, Dublin and Paris, where she studied at the Académie Julian. On her return to Dublin, she established herself as one of the leading portraitists in the city. Hugh Lane Gallery has a fine collection of her work, with sensitive portraits of Jane Barlow, Edward Martyn, Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats along with the figure studies, Portrait Study, Mother and Child and Painting of a Woman.
Purser was an active collector of other artist’s work, which hung in the rooms of her home, Mespil House. She donated drawings by Sir John Everett Millais to the gallery and numerous works from her collection were given posthumously in her memory through the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. These include a watercolour by Berthe Morisot, stained glass by Wilhelmina Geddes, and paintings by Ernest Quost, Jean Souverbie, Maurice de Vlaminck and Bernard Albertini.
Sarah Purser was an energetic advocate for the visual arts in Ireland throughout her life. Her home at Mespil House was a meeting place for various cultural figures, especially on her “Second Tuesday” gatherings. She founded the stained glass studio, An Túr Gloine, which was instrumental in the resurgence of that medium in Ireland. She was an active exhibition organiser. She arranged the 1901 exhibition by Nathaniel Hone and John Butler Yeats that was a catalyst for Hugh Lane’s interest in modern art, which in turn led to the founding of this gallery. Later, she secured Charlemont House as the permanent home for Hugh Lane Gallery. With her cousin, she endowed the Griffith-Purser lectures in the history of European painting at UCD and TCD. In 1924, she founded the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which has since donated 150 works to the gallery.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with texts by Roy Foster, Hilary Pyle, Hannah Baker, Robert O’Byrne, David Caron, Logan Sisley and Barbara Dawson.
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Press
Barbara Dawson, Director of Hugh Lane Gallery & Mrs. Sabina Higgins at the opening of MORE POWER TO YOU
“This brilliant exhibition brings this extraordinary person back into our line of sight and minds” – Sunday Business Post
“For anyone interested in Irish art this is a must-visit” – The Gloss Magazine
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of portraits by Sarah Purser and drawings by Josephine Webb.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of portraits by Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works (left to right) by John Singer Sargent, Walter Frederick Osborne, John Everett Millais and Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of portraits by Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works (left to right) by Mary Swanzy and Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works (left to right) by Michael Healy, Beatrice Elvery and Wilhelmina Geddes who were members of the An Túr Gloine workshop set up by Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of ‘Miss Maud Gonne’ by Sarah Purser.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of Flower Piece (1880s) by Ernest Quost.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view of works donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.
MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser – A Force for Irish art, 2024 – 2025. Installation view (left to right) of photographs of Sarah Purser in the National Gallery of Ireland boardroom, Sarah Purser with art historian and director of the National Gallery of Ireland, Dr George Furlong, and Sarah Purser talking to Film Sensor, James Montgomery at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.
