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Imogen Stuart

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Imogen Stuart
Imogen Stuart in 2011
BornImogen Werner
25 May 1927
Berlin, Germany
Died24 March 2024(2024-03-24) (aged 96)
Dublin, Ireland
OccupationSculptor
Notable work
SpouseIan Stuart (div. 1973)
ParentBruno E. Werner [de]
Websitewww.imogenstuart.com

Imogen Stuart (née Werner; 25 May 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish sculptor, influenced by 19th-century Expressionism and early Irish Christian art. She mainly produced wood and stone for settings for churches, but also produced works in bronze, clay and terracotta, created many secular works, and was exhibited internationally.

Born and raised in pre-war Berlin as the daughter of the well-known art critic Bruno E. Werner [de], she was exposed to modern developments in the visual arts from an early age and a significant influence on her later work. She studied in Bavaria from 1945 under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger, who became an early mentor. She met the fellow Hitzberger student and later important Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple relocated to Ireland in 1961, at first living at his parents' house in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, before moving to Sandycove, Co. Dublin. Ian Stuart was the grandson of the Irish republican revolutionary Maud Gonne. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1973.

Stuart spent most of her life in Ireland, occasionally returning to live in Berlin. She became one of Ireland's best-known sculptors, with work in public and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Life

Early life

Born Imogen Werner in Berlin on 25 May 1927, she was the daughter of Katharina (née Klug), a former art history student originally from Upper Silesia (now part of Poland), and the internationally known art critic and writer Bruno E. Werner [de]. She had one her sister, Sybil, and both spent their childhoods in pre-war 1920s Berlin. Encouraged by their father the two developed an interest in drawing and sculpting at a young age. Through artist friends of her father, both were taught techniques in craft and sculpture.

However, from the mid-1930s, her father —who was partly Jewish but had served in the First World War— detected a "tremendous rage" in German society that eventually culminated in the Second World War. By early 1945 the Russian army was advancing towards Berlin. It was then, according to the art historian Kate Robinson, that Imogen's "golden childhood came to an end."

Both daughters were moved that year to a convent in Bavaria, while their father apparently went "on the run". There, she later studied under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger until 1950, learning modelling, carving and relief techniques wit a variety of materials. She met her future husband, the Irishman Ian Stuart there in 1948; he also studied under Hitzberger and became a significant Irish artist in his own right. Ian was the son of the writer Francis Stuart (1902–2000) and Iseult Gonne (d. 1954) and a grandson of the Irish republican revolutionary and feminist Maud Gonne (d. 1953), who became known as a muse for the poet W. B. Yeats (d. 1939).

Move to Ireland

Altar carvings, Honan Chapel, Cork, c. 1986

The couple moved to Ireland in 1949, at first living in with his parents at Laragh Castle near Glendalough, County Wicklow, into what—given his family background—the writer Kate Robinson described as a "notable mixture of politics and literature". She later said that "It is very hard to describe how different this country was from the country from which I had come. It was a totally different world, on a different planet. The Catholicism, the nationalism, the magical countryside, made it all seem like going back a hundred years."

Figures at the front of the altar in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh

They had three daughters: Aoibheann, Siobhan and Aisling. Siobhan died in a car crash in September 1998 and is buried in Glendalough. Although she and Ian divorced in 1973 after a long separation, she spent most of the remainder of her life in Ireland.

Imogen Stuart died on 24 March 2024 aged 96.

Style and material

The Virgin and Child (1991), on display at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Stuart's work is informed by 19th century German expressionist sculptors such as Ernst Barlach, but is heavily grounded in early Medieval early Irish Christian imagery and iconography, in a sensibility also influenced by the later Romanesque and Gothic art periods. She worked in wood, bronze, stone, steel, clay and terracotta, and although her primary was producing settings for churches borrowing from later Insular art, she also designed and sculpted many secular works.

Within the sharply defined limits of material, subject, space, size and money given, I learned to develop within myself a great freedom of expression. My life is full of gifts or minor miracles. I never intellectualize – the eyes and senses dictate my hands directly. Once the work has been completed a symbolism becomes so obviously and profoundly evident that I have to regard it as supernatural

— Imogen Stuart in Notes on the Life of a Sculptor

Work

As the most prolific sculptor for both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland churches interiors, examples of her work care found across Ireland. Her best-known sculptures include the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth and the carved altar and baptismal font in the Honan Chapel, in Cork City.

Her work extends beyond church settings, and includes public art and monuments as well as portrait heads. Her portraits include a bust of ex-president Mary Robinson now in Áras an Uachtaráin (the presidential residence in Dublin), and a Bust of the art critic Brian Fallon. Among her public monuments are the Flame Of Human Dignity at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; and the sculpture of Pope John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. She has also produced collections of silver, gold and bronze jewellery, as well as drawings, monumental works in wood, stone, concrete, bronze and other media.

She designed the sculpture in the town square of Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare. With Vicki Donovan she designed the silver tabernacle in St. Mel's Cathedral, Longford.

During her later career she often worked with other carvers, including Phil O'Neill and Ciaran Byrne.

Legacy

A professor of sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, she was also a member of Aosdána, and received honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin (2002), University College Dublin (2004), and NUI Maynooth (2005). She was elected Saoi ("wise one") by Aosdána in 2015 as the highest honour that can be bestowed by the state-supported association of Irish creative artists.

In 2010 she was awarded the McAuley medal (named after Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831) by the Irish president Mary McAleese, who paid tribute to her "genius", crafting "a canon of work that synthesises our complex past, present images and possible futures...as an intrinsic part of the narrative of modern Irish art". The biography Imogen Stuart, Sculptor on her work and life was published in 2002 by the art critic and writer Brian Fallon, and included a foreword by the archaeologist and historian Peter Harbison.

References

Notes

  1. "Interview with Miriam O'Callaghan". RTÉ Radio 1, Miriam meets, 17 May 2012. Retrieved 25 March 2024
  2. ^ Heaney 2024.
  3. Fallon 2001, p. 160.
  4. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 215.
  5. ^ Robinson 2002, p. 216.
  6. Robinson 2002, pp. 216–218.
  7. ^ Robinson 2002, pp. 215, 218.
  8. Robinson 2002, p. 217.
  9. ^ "A life in stone: Sculptor Imogen Stuart reflects on her life". , 2 October 2021. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
  10. "Stuart, Imogen: Death". The Irish Times, March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
  11. ^ Scally 2024.
  12. Walker 1989, p. 207. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWalker1989 (help)
  13. "Visual Arts: Imogen Stuart". Aosdána, Irish Arts Council. Retrieved 25 March 2024
  14. Robinson 2002, p. 218.
  15. Daly 1974.
  16. Stuart, Imogen (1988), "Notes on the Life of a Sculptor", Milltown Studies 22, pp. 92–94
  17. Robinson 2002, p. 222.
  18. ^ Forristal 1987, pp. 648–651.
  19. O'Callaghan 2016, p. 168.
  20. "Imogen Stuart".
  21. ^ "Aosdána – Members – Imogen Stuart". Aosdána. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  22. McDonagh 2014.
  23. Robinson 2002, p. 219.
  24. O'Donohue, Bryan. "Tokens". Irish Arts Council, 1993. Retrieved 26 March 2024
  25. McGarry 2008.
  26. McBride 2008.
  27. "The Arts Council expresses its sadness at the passing of Aosdána member and Saoi, sculptor Imogen Stuart". Arts council of Ireland, 25 March 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024
  28. Duncan, Pamela (16 September 2015). "Imogen Stuart, Edna O'Brien and William Trevor elected Saoithe". Irish Times. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  29. Scally 2010.
  30. Robinson 2002, pp. 215–222.

Sources

External links

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