Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize 2023

New research and writing on the history of women in the visual arts in Ireland

Sarah Cecilia Harrison (1863–1941) was an accomplished artist and curator, as well as an advocate of social reform and women’s rights in Ireland in the early twentieth century.

The Gallery acquired the Sarah Cecilia Harrison archive in 2019. Comprising over 400 letters from Sir Hugh Lane to the artist, the archive (dating from 1905–1915) provides insight into the world in which both Lane and Harrison lived and worked.

To mark the launch of the Sarah Cecilia Harrison archive to the public, and in honour of Harrison’s legacy in the arts and as a social campaigner, the National Gallery of Ireland established the Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize in art history, recognising the best new research and writing on the history of women in the visual arts in Ireland. 

Winner of the 2023 Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize 

The winner of this year's prize is John Christopher Vaughan for his essay In the Mood for God: Colour and Mysticism in the Art of Mary Swanzy.

Read John's award-winning essay here. 

John Christopher Vaughan is from Dublin. In 2021 he graduated with an MA in Writing from the Royal College of Art, London. John writes that this essay “was at first an attempt to develop a cubist form of writing that would express the kaleidoscopic nature of her cubist paintings, the excitement, the speed, the disorienting abundance and the disorienting speed with which that abundance disappears that seemed to anticipate contemporary life, our life, now, the beauty and the horror, the internet, the feed. It was going to be a breathless, schizoid torrent. It was going to be Deleuzian. It was going to be practically unreadable. Then it was one word. It was hours and hours spent dwelling on that word, that one word. Then it was one image. It was Mary Swanzy at a friends' house, sitting at the dinner table single-mindedly pursuing a single grain of rice. It was that image, the indefensible pursuit of something so miniscule and insignificant and yet so essential to the one pursuing it. This essay is a portrait, a close reading, an ode. It is my single grain of rice.”

Two runners-up were also acknowledged by the judges: 

• Paula Arning - Shaping Modern Spaces: Exploring dynamics in the modernist designs of Eileen Gray and Lilly Reich
• Marie Kelly - Amanda Coogan: Dress and the deconstruction of feminine truths in yellow and Medea

This prize is generously supported by the descendants of the sister of Sarah Cecilia Harrison, Beatrice Chisholm.

Previous winner

In 2022, the inaugural prize was won by Chiara Harrison Lambe, with two runners-up, Niamh Flood and Mary Morrissy, also acknowledged.

You can read last year's winning essay, Stella Steyn (1907-1987): 'A Name to Remember' here.

The Gallery's Library and Archive

The Gallery’s Library and Archive include important and valuable collections of research material held at the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art (ESB CSIA), Yeats Archive and Gallery's institutional archives. These collections support the study and scholarly interpretation of visual art in Ireland.

The central role played by women artists in the development and dissemination of modernist art in Ireland is well documented. However, the broader story of women artists in Ireland and their achievements has often been forgotten, or viewed as ancillary to the standard canon.

In 2019 the Gallery acquired the Sarah Cecilia Harrison archive. Comprising over 400 letters from Sir Hugh Lane to the artist, the archive (dating from 1905–1915) provides insight into the world in which both Lane and Harrison lived and worked. This important collection is now fully catalogued and digitised and available to researchers on source.ie. 

Archives and primary research are essential to understanding and revealing these stories. Through the development of our collections, engagement and learning programmes, the Library and Archives department, including the ESB CSIA, has worked to promote Irish women artists as well as female-led collectives and industries.
 

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