Date: 1949
Dimensions: 60.5 x 21.25 cm
Medium: monoprint
Collection: Niland Collection
Provenance: Presented by The Friends of The National Collections of Ireland

Description:
Despite playing a significant role in introducing Modernist art to Ireland, Evie Hone is best remembered from her work in stained glass. Her first designs date from 1931 and in 1933 she went to work at An Tor Gloine, the stained glass workshop established by Sarah Purser. Between 1933 and her death in 1955, Hone produced a number of innovative and accomplished windows which were celebrated both at home and abroad. The most prestigious of her commissions was for an eighteen light window depicting the Crucifixion and the last supper for Eton College Chapel.

Hone’s decision to shift her artistic focus from painting to stained glass may have been influenced by her strong religious faith. In 1925 she quit her artistic life to join a community of Anglican Nuns in Cornwall. Although she left after less than a year, throughout the 1930s her work grew increasingly figurative and religious and in 1937 she converted to Catholicism.

This monoprint depicting a Dominican Saint displays in the influence of Irish medieval carving and dates from the same year as the Eton College window. Although Hone often exhibited her designs for stained glass, this image does not appear to relate to a window design.

Written by Riann Coulter