Beatrice Elvery

Portrait of Beatrice Elvery by William Orpen, 1909

Beatrice Moss Elvery (1881, Dublin – 1970, Rockall, Sandycove) was an Irish stained-glass artist and painter.

She was the second daughter of a Dublin businessman whose family had originated from Spain where they were silk merchants. Her family owned the original Elverys Sports store in Wicklow Street, Dublin. She attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where William Orpen (1878–1931) taught painting and later used Beatrice as a model. Of his pupil, Orpen wrote that she had "many gifts, much temperament and great ability. Her only fault was that the transmission of her thoughts from her brain to paper or canvas, clay or stained glass became so easy to her that all was said in a few hours. Nothing on earth could make her go on and try to improve on her first translation of her thought." She remained a friend and correspondent of Orpen until shortly before his death in 1931.^[1]

When Sarah Purser (1848–1943) founded her studio An Túr Gloine (The Tower of Glass) in 1903, she invited Beatrice Elvery to be one of the designers and her first commission of six windows was installed in the Convent of Mercy, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh in 1905.

Beatrice married Charles Campbell, 2nd Baron Glenavy in 1912 and they settled in London, returning to Ireland at the end of the war when she then concentrated on painting. She had three children Patrick, Bridget (known as Biddy) and Michael. Bridget was killed by a fire bomb in the Blitz.

The couple moved in the highest literary circles including Yeats, Shaw, and D.H. Lawrence. Elvery was also a friend and correspondent of the short story writer Katherine Mansfield.^[2] Her portrait of Mansfield in Elvery's garden is in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.^[3]

Elvery's Éire (1907) was a landmark painting promoting the idea of an independent Irish state.^[4] She also produced numerous illustrations for children's books.^[5]

References

↑ Retrieved Feb. 29, 2008
↑ Katherine Mansfield Letter to Beatrice Campbell
↑ Katherine Mansfield and S.S. Koteliansky in the garden, 1920 by Beatrice Campbell, oil on canvas
↑ Echoes of The Belle Epoque. When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland. NYU. Retrieved. Jan. 31, 2008.
↑ William Orpen Biography. Retrieved Jan. 31, 2008.

External links

add: Auto biog. "To-day we will only gossip" by Beatrice Lady Glenavy, published by Constable & Co of London(WC2) in 1964

British and Irish stained glass

British and Irish stained glass (1811–1918)

History

Influences

Artistic movements	Aesthetic Movement Art Nouveau Arts and Crafts Movement Biblia pauperum Cambridge Camden Society Classicism Early Renaissance Exoticism Gothic Revival Oxford Movement Romanticism

Organizations	The Glass House Hogarth Club Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

People

Architectural	John Loughborough Pearson Augustus Pugin George Gilbert Scott Alexander Thomson

Artists	Edward Liddall Armitage Hugh Arnold Margaret Chilton Charles Edmund Clutterbuck Trena Cox Louis Davis works Rachel de Montmorency Alfred Drury Mabel Esplin Moira Forsyth Jane Gray Reginald Hallward works Herbert Hendrie James Humphries Hogan Joan Howson works Marjorie Kemp Charles Eamer Kempe Mary Lowndes William Morris Karl Parsons works Henry Payne works Lilian Josephine Pocock Arnold Wathen Robinson works Arild Rosenkrantz Francis Skeat works Caroline Townshend works Christopher Webb Christopher Whall works Veronica Whall works Thomas Willement William Wilson Paul Woodroffe works Edward Woore works British stained-glass artists Irish stained-glass artists

Critics	John Ruskin

Manufacturers	An Túr Gloine Burlison and Grylls Harry Clarke Clayton and Bell Daniel Cottier John Hardman & Co. Heaton, Butler and Bayne Hincks and Burnell Lavers, Barraud and Westlake Morris & Co. James Powell and Sons Shrigley and Hunt William Wailes William Warrington

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