Sarah Purser

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Sarah Purser (March 22, 1848 - August 7, 1943) was an Irish artist. She studied in Paris at the Academie Julian and worked mostly as a portraitist, through her own talent and energy, and through her friendship with the Gore-Booths she was very successful in obtaining commissions, she herself famously commented

"I went through the British aristocracy like the measles."

However, Bruce Arnold (1977) notes

"some of her finest and most sensitive work was not strictly portraiture, for example, An Irish Idyll in the Ulster Museum, and Le Petit Déjeuner [in the National Gallery of Ireland ]"

Sarah Purser became very wealthy through astute investments, particularly in Guinness. She was very active in the art world in Dublin and was involved in the setting up of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, she was the one who persuaded the Irish government to give over Charlemont House for that purpose. She was also associated with the stain glass movement founding a stained-glass workshop, An Túr Gloine in 1903. In 1923 she became the first female member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

[edit] References

Sarah Purser at the Princess Grace Irish Library
RTÉ biographical note
Bruce Arnold (1977). Irish art: a concise history (2 ed.) London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20148-X.
John O'Grady(1996)The Life and Work of Sarah Purser Four Courts Press. ISBN 1-85182-241-0