Sarah Purser — The Woman Who Shaped Irish Art
Irish Artist · 1848–1943
Sarah Purser
Portrait painter, patron and powerhouse — the most influential woman in the history of Irish art.
Le Petit Déjeuner (1885) — painted in her Paris years, and one of her most admired works.
The Story
Sarah Purser was a brilliant portrait painter — and then something rarer still: the organiser, patron and power-broker who did more than almost anyone to shape modern Irish art. Sharp, funny and formidably capable, she once said of her early success that she "went through the British aristocracy like the measles."
She was born on 22 March 1848 at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin. She trained in Dublin and at the celebrated Académie Julian in Paris, and by the 1880s had built one of the busiest and most sought-after portrait practices in the country, capturing Ireland's intellectual, political and social leaders with psychological precision and real elegance. She began exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1872.
In 1903 she founded An Túr Gloine (The Tower of Glass), the co-operative studio that drove the revival of Irish stained glass and trained a generation of makers — among them Michael Healy and Evie Hone. She ran it for nearly forty years. It transformed the country's applied art, and it is a large part of why Ireland produced the greatest stained glass of its age.
From 1911 her salons at Mespil House drew Dublin's intelligentsia, and in 1924 she founded the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, helping secure major works for the nation. That same year she became the first woman elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. She died in Dublin on 7 August 1943, aged 95 — a great painter, and the closest thing Irish art has ever had to a founding matriarch.
Timeline
- 1848 — Born 22 March at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin.
- 1872 — Begins exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy.
- 1878 — Studies at the Académie Julian, Paris.
- 1880s–90s — Becomes Ireland's leading society portraitist.
- 1903 — Founds An Túr Gloine, the Tower of Glass stained-glass studio.
- 1924 — First woman elected a full member of the RHA; founds the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.
- 1943 — Dies 7 August in Dublin, aged 95.
Her Dublin
The city she painted, ran and enriched. Click a pin for the places that made her a power in Irish art.
An Túr Gloine · Mespil House · the National Gallery of Ireland.
Featured Works
Collector's Guide
Her Paris-era masterpiece Le Petit Déjeuner is the essential Purser. For the portraitist of literary Ireland, her Portrait of Jack B. Yeats is a must, and her Roger Casement carries real historical weight. The tender A Lady Holding a Rattle shows her lighter, domestic side. Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection.
The Purser Lover's Gift Guide
Three ways into her world, at three price points.
- A Lady Holding a Rattle — art print · from €60
- Portrait of Kathleen Behan — art print · from €70
- Le Petit Déjeuner — art print · from €75
Discover Similar Artists
John Lavery — the great society portraitist of the same era. · William Orpen — Dublin's master draughtsman. · Sarah Cecilia Harrison — fellow pioneering woman portraitist.