Mainie Harriet Jellett

• Birth Name — Mary Harriet Jellett • Born — 29 April 1897 • Birthplace — Dublin, Ireland • Died — 16 February 1944 • Place of death — Dublin, Ireland • Resting Place — St Fintan's Cemetery, Howth • Occupation — Artist, painter • Education — Metropolitan School of Art • Alma Mater — Westminster Technical Institute

Jellett was born on 29 April 1897 at 36 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, one of the four daughters of William Jellett, a barrister and later MP, and Janet McKenzie Stokes. Mainie's mother was an accomplished musician, and all her daughters received a musical education. Mainie's sister Dorothea (Bay) was the orchestra conductor at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Her aunt was Eva Jellett, a pioneering doctor working in India. William and Eva Jellett were among the seven children of John Hewitt Jellett, Provost of Trinity College Dublin. Jellett's art education began at the age of 11, when she received painting lessons from Elizabeth Yeats, Sarah Cecilia Harrison, and Mary Manning, who had a studio on Merrion Row, and whose influence on Irish artists of the time was considerable. In 1914, she studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. Her teachers included William Orpen, and his influence is apparent in her work from this period. Despite her artistic talent, she was still undecided about her future, and at this time took regular piano lessons with the intent of becoming a concert pianist. She decided to become a painter after working under Walter Sickert at the Westminster Technical Institute in London, where she enrolled in 1917 and remained until 1919. She showed precocious talent as an artist in the impressionist style. In 1920, she won the Taylor Art Scholarship worth £50. The same year, she submitted work to the annual exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

• Illustration — Mainie Jellett, Abstract Composition, 1935, oil on canvas, 119.5 x 96.9 cm In 1921, along with her companion Evie Hone, she moved to Paris. There she worked under André Lhote and Albert Gleizes, encountering cubism and beginning an exploration of abstract art. Her new style, including colour and rhythm, was greatly inspired by her stay in France. After 1921, she and Evie Hone returned to Dublin, but for the next decade, they spent part of each year in Paris. In a 1943 essay entitled 'Definition of my Art' Jellett describes her art as having three revolutions inspired by her teachers; the first credited to Walter Sickert, the second to André Lhote, and the third to Albert Gleizes. • Illustration — Achill Horses by Mainie Jellett, 1938 In 1923, she exhibited two cubist paintings at the Dublin Painters' Exhibition. The response was hostile, with the Irish Times publishing a photograph of one of the paintings and quoting their art critic as saying of them, 'to me they presented an insoluble puzzle'. The following year, she and Evie Hone had their first joint exhibition. A deeply committed Christian, her paintings, though never strictly representational and sometimes completely non-objective, occasionally have religious titles and may, in some respects, resemble icons in tone and even, on occasion, in the palette. In Irish Art, a Concise History, Bruce Arnold writes: "Many of her abstracts are built up from a central 'eye' or 'heart' in arcs of colour, held up and together by the rhythm of line and shape, and given depth and intensity - a sense of abstract perspective - by the basic understanding of light and colour" Jellett was an important figure in Irish art history, both as an early proponent of abstract art and as a champion of the modernist movement. Her painting was often attacked critically but she proved eloquent in defence of her ideas. Along with Evie Hone, Louis le Brocquy, Jack Hanlon, and Norah McGuinness, Jellett co-founded the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1944. In her published work "An Approach To Painting" (1942) Jellett stated why she felt artists were necessary for society: • Illustration — Achill Horses, oil on canvas, 61 x 92 cm, 1939, National Gallery of Ireland "The idea of an artist being a special person, an exotic flower set apart from other people is one of the errors resulting from the industrial revolution, and the fact of artists being pushed out of their lawful position in the life and society of the present day. … Their present enforced isolation from the majority is a very serious situation and I believe it is one of the many causes which has resulted in the present chaos we live in. The art of a nation is one of the ultimate facts by which its spiritual health is judged and appraised by posterity."

Mainie Harriet Jellett was recorded at birth as Mary Harriet Jellett. The authorities additionally record the headings Mary Harriet Jellet, Mainie Harriet Jellet, Mainie H. Jellett and Mary Harriet Jellett. Her recorded language was English.