SESSION: Irish Women Artists and their International Networks, 1870 – Present
Irish women artists have long forged influential paths beyond Ireland, pursuing their careers in defiance of social, cultural, and political barriers. From Parisian academies and London art schools to contemporary biennials and digital platforms, they built diasporic feminist networks that have shaped artistic production across borders. However, these contributions remain underexplored, particularly outside of Ireland.
Our panellists explore the international trajectories and transnational networks of Irish women artists from 1870 to the present, investigating the impact of these women on artistic culture and production in Ireland and beyond, including Britain, Europe, and beyond. By focusing on global exchange, we aim to reposition the island of Ireland as central, rather than peripheral, to modern and contemporary art, complicating binaries of Ireland-Europe, margin-centre, and tradition-modernity.
This panel will begin with a collaborative lecture by the convenors and conclude with a facilitated discussion on the question, ‘What’s next for Irish women artists?’ By centring transnational feminist perspectives, we aim to challenge dominant narratives and foster a more inclusive, globally attuned understanding of Irish art.
Session Convenors:
Cai Lyons, Independent Art Historian
Chiara Harrison Lambe, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Session Speakers:
Méabh Scahill, St Catharine’s College Cambridge
Resident/Non- Resident: Phoebe Anna Traquair and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland and Edinburgh
Born and educated in Dublin, Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852 – 1936) became a key figure in Edinburgh’s Arts and Crafts Movement. Her marriage to Scottish palaeontologist Dr Ramsay Heatley Traquair in 1873 brought the artist to Edinburgh, where she became embedded in the city’s artistic, intellectual, and philanthropic networks.
Little known in Ireland today, this paper readdresses Traquair’s life and work as an Irish artist working abroad. Widely recognised in her time in Scotland, geography and gender have both played a role in her marginalisation as an Irish artist. Traquair ceased to exhibit work with the Irish Arts and Crafts Society in 1904 when her work was relegated to the sub-category of ‘non-resident’ in that year’s exhibition. This paper looks beyond the widely used, simple descriptor of Traquair as ‘Irish-born, Edinburgh-based’ to ask what her Irish connections can do to complicate binary nationalist narratives of the Arts and Crafts movement. Traquair’s life
and work directly connect the cities of Dublin and Edinburgh, but networks can be traced even further. Through correspondence and exhibition records in both Irish and Scottish archives, this paper traces the global reach of Traquair’s personal and artistic connections. A ‘non-resident’ at a time when Irish nationalism was both growing and narrowing, this paper examines how an artist like Phoebe Anna Traquair can enrich our understanding of Irish women artists working abroad, and in turn complicate conceptions of the ‘canon’ of the Irish Cultural Revival.
Katie Buckley, National Gallery of Ireland
Illuminating Networks: Catherine O’Brien (1881-1963), An Túr Gloine, and the International Reach of Irish Stained Glass
Catherine O’Brien’s (1881-1963) pioneering international artistic practice reveals new insights into women’s roles in the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Irish Celtic Revival. O’Brien spent the entirety of her sixty-year career at the stained-glass studio An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) (ATG), serving as Director from 1940-1963. ATG was arguably the most spearheading and successful Irish Arts and Crafts enterprise. Established by Sarah Purser (1848-1943) in 1903, it was a female-dominated operation from the outset, with six female artists on staff.
This paper will examine how ATG, as a studio, and O’Brien specifically, used the medium of stained glass to facilitate international cultural exchange through transnational commissions. ATG’s work can be found globally in Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The Irish Arts and Crafts Movement has been studied predominantly through the lens of cultivating national cultural identity. This paper offers a wider perspective exploring how these artists elevated Ireland’s global artistic reputation.
This study requires extensive original archival research and visual analysis of the ATG Archive, compiled by O’Brien, and working drawings at the National Gallery of Ireland. It will incorporate theoretical frameworks essential to intersectional feminist art history, such as challenging the male-dominated art-historical canon, critiquing gendered narratives that marginalise women artists, and re-legitimising craft.
This paper will present the significant, unparalleled international reputation and network that ATG has cultivated. It will offer alternative ways to understand the international impact of Irish women artists through the communicative process of commissioning stained glass.
AnneMarie Saliba, Hugh Lane Gallery
Dáirine Vanston: A Critical Examination of Her Role in Modern Art
Irish artist Dáirine (Doreen) Vanston (1903–1988) was a pivotal yet understudied figure in the development of modern art in Ireland and internationally. While she is primarily recognised for her expressionist use of colour and for her association with the White Stag Group, the progression of her individual style and the transnational networks that shaped her practice have received little attention. Existing scholarship on her work acknowledges the influence of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and the landscapes of San José. However, it neglects to fully examine how Vanston’s international career informed both her style and her contribution to modern art. Through a visual analysis of works such as A Dying Animal (c.1943) and Central American Landscape (c.1949), alongside archival documentation, primary sources, and past research, this paper presents new insights into her networks and positions her within a broader transnational framework. To analyse her work, this paper first evaluates the lasting impact of her training in Paris at the Académie Roger Bissière and under André Lhote, followed by a contextualisation of her central role in the flourishing of early- to mid-twentieth-century art in Costa Rica. Dáirine Vanston: A Critical Examination of her Role in Modern Art repositions Vanston at the centre of modern Irish art. It provides a new understanding of her work, her collaborations and her significance within the history of Irish and global modernism.
Anya Znaenok, Independent Researcher
How Hilary Heron Synthesized Irishness and Cosmopolitanism in Her Sculpture
In the years following World War II, Irish artists continued exploring complex questions of national identity during the country’s post-war isolation. This research examines how sculptor Hilary Heron (1923-1977) connected Irish cultural heritage with emerging European modernism in her sculpture. This perspective challenges perceptions of Irish art as isolated during this period. Through analysis of her sculptural practice, the paper investigates the specific visual and material strategies Heron used to reconcile Irishness with cosmopolitan modernism.
The methodology combines two approaches. The first maps Heron’s professional trajectory from her landmark participation as Ireland’s first woman sculptor at the 1965 Venice Biennale to her famous motorbike travels through Europe, during which she met leading artists of the time and absorbed new artistic tendencies. The second employs visual analysis of key works that combine her synthesis of Irishness and modernism, such as: Irish Elk (1952), where prehistoric Irish natural history meets Surrealist biomorphic forms; Lithodendron series (1960s) that demonstrate her engagement with natural materials; and Celtic Spirals (1960s), where ancient motifs undergo contemporary abstraction.
The findings reveal that Heron developed a complex artistic language that negotiates between local and global influences. Her work demonstrates how Irish identity could be dynamically reconfigured through international modernism, rather than treated as a fixed category. This research contributes to Irish art history by providing a framework for understanding underexplored Heron’s work, and cultural identity in post-war sculpture in general, showing how Heron’s practice transcends national boundaries while remaining deeply engaged with local context, materials, and heritage.