Nelly O'Brien
| Nelly O'Brien | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ellen Lucy O'Brien 4 June 1864 Cahirmoyle, County Limerick, Ireland |
| Died | 1 April 1925 (aged 60) London |
| Resting place | Cahirmoyle, County Limerick |
| Nationality | Irish |
Ellen Lucy or Nelly O'Brien (4 June 1864 – 1 April 1925) was an Irish miniaturist, landscape artist, and Gaelic League activist.
Nelly O'Brien was born Ellen Lucy O'Brien on 4 June 1864, at Cahirmoyle, County Limerick. She was the eldest child Edward William O'Brien and Mary O'Brien (née Spring Rice). Her siblings were Lucy and Dermod, with Dermod also becoming an artist. Her father was a landowner, and her mother was a sculptor and painter and sister of Thomas Spring Rice. O'Brien's grandfather was William Smith O'Brien. Whilst a young child, O'Brien spent two years living on the French Riviera from 1866 to 1868. Her mother later died of tuberculosis, and the three children were raised by their aunt, the writer and nationalist, Charlotte Grace O'Brien. Their father remarried in 1880, to Julia Marshall, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. O'Brien attended school in England from 1879, and later enrolled to study painting at the Slade School of Art. O'Brien met Walter Osborne through her brother Dermod, and considered herself engaged to him, but Osborne died in 1903. A portrait of O'Brien by Osborne is held in the Hugh Lane Gallery. O'Brien died suddenly on 1 April 1925 whilst visiting Dermod at 66 Elm Park Gardens, London. She is buried at the family plot in Cahirmoyle.
O'Brien returned to Ireland, and began to paint miniatures on ivory using a magnifying glass. She also painted watercolour landscapes. Her first exhibition with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) was in 1896, where she showed three works including Sketch near Malahide. She would exhibit with them on and off until 1922. During some of her time in Dublin, she lived with her half-brother, Edward Conor Marshall O'Brien, on Mount Street. As part of an exhibition of Irish painters, O'Brien exhibited a number of portrait miniatures at the London Guildhall in 1904. The 1906 Oireachtas na Gaeilge featured a number of her paintings, and in the same year she became honorary secretary of a newly established art committee. At the Munster–Connacht exhibition in Limerick of 1906, she exhibited a miniature of William Smith O'Brien amongst her 12 works on show. O'Brien produced many portraits, including one of Douglas Hyde, which was exhibited by the RHA in 1916.
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