Life
1848-1943 [Sarah Henrietta]; b. 22 March, Kingston [Dun Laoghaire], Co.
Dublin; ed. Switzerland, and after the failure of her father’s flour-milling
business in 1873, at the 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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Commentary
W. B. Yeats, “Autobiography”, in Memoir, ed. Denis Donoghue (London: Macmillan 1972): ‘Among my Dublin friends was an artist, Miss Sarah Purser. She ws so clever a woman that people found it impossible to believe she was a bad painter. She carried with her the prestige of a family which contained great scholars who had published no books, and men of science famous for clarity and greatness of range who had made no discoveries. She herself, though [43] considerate when her heart was touched, gave currenty to a small, genuine wit by fastening to it, like a pair of wings, brutality.’ Yeats goes on to speak of an encounter with her in which she tells of meeting Maud Gonne in Paris in company with a very tall man, and hearing from a doctor that they would both be dead in six month. he also speaks of her portrait of Maud Gonne, made ‘in conscious imitation’ of the frontispiece of a book by Marie Bashkirtseff - a ‘girl full of egotism ... and not very interesting talent.’ (pp.43.44.)
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.)
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974) gives account of Hyde’s visits at Sarah Purser’s (p.95.)
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Notes
Sins of the father?: Sarah Purser remarked to Maud Gonne of her son Seaghan (Sean MacBride) during a visit in Paris in 1907: ‘Aren’t you afraid that he’ll grow up to be a murderer?’ See R. F. Foster, Life of Yeats (1997).
Exhibition (I): 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 work on 21 Oct.-3 Nov. 1901 in the 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.)
Exhibition (II): Gorry Gallery, exhib. ‘Drawings and Watercolours, Sarah Purser 1848-1943’ (23 May-3 June 1993); inc. John Butler Yeats, pencil.
Art sales: “A Visitor” [a single female in white, penumbral, semi-reclining, with fan; oil on canvas], was sold for £1 at the auction of her house contents in 1943 and offered for €60-80,000 at Whyte’s in 2005
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