Grace Gifford
| Grace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett | |
|---|---|
Young Ireland:Grace Gifford (c.1907) by William Orpen
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| Born |
4 March 1888 Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 13 December 1955 (aged 67) Portobello, Dublin, Ireland |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for | Cartoonist |
Grace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett (4 March 1888 – 13 December 1955) was an Irish artist and cartoonist who was active in the Republican movement, who married her fiancé Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol only a few hours before he was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Her parents were Frederick Gifford, a solicitor and a Roman Catholic, and Isabella Julia Burton Gifford, a Protestant. They were married in St George's, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of the city. Grace was the second youngest in a family of 12 children and grew up in the fashionable suburb of Rathmines in Dublin. The boys were baptised as Catholics and the girls as Protestant, but effectively the children were all raised as Protestants – the girls attended Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace, and the boys attended the High School in Harcourt St.
At the age of 16, Gifford went to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she studied under the Irish artist William Orpen. Orpen regarded Grace as one of his most talented pupils. He often sketched Grace and eventually painted her as one of his subjects for a series on 'Young Ireland'. At around this time, Grace's talent for caricature was discovered and developed. In 1907 she attended the course in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art, London.
She returned to Dublin in 1908 and, with great difficulty, tried to earn a living as a caricaturist, publishing her cartoons in The Shanachie, Irish Life, Meadowstreet and The Irish Review, which was edited from 1913 by Joseph Plunkett. She considered emigrating but gave up the idea. Despite earning so little money, she enjoyed a lively social life; her friends included Nora Dryhurst, a journalist who worked in London, and George William Russell (Æ). During the same year, Mrs Dryhurst brought Grace to the opening of the new bilingual school Scoil Éanna in Ranelagh, Dublin. It was here that she met Joseph Plunkett for the first time. He was a friend of her brother-in-law, another of the future leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, Thomas MacDonagh, who was married to Grace's sister Muriel.
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