Chiara Harrison Lambe announced as winner of the National Gallery of Ireland’s Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize

Chiara Harrison Lambe announced as winner of the National Gallery of Ireland’s Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize

The National Gallery of Ireland is pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize 2022. Chiara Harrison Lambe, author of the winning essay, was awarded a €1,000 prize at a reception held in the Gallery on Thursday 17 November. 

Anne Chisholm, benefactor of the Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize 2022, commented: “This award represents long overdue recognition of a remarkable woman to whom I am proud to be related: my great aunt Celia, the artist and social reformer Sarah Cecilia Harrison. The family is delighted to support this new prize and hope it will encourage good work in her memory.”

The Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize recognises the best new research and writing on the history of women in the visual arts in Ireland and this inaugural award also marks the publication of the fully digitised Sarah Cecilia Harrison and Hugh Lane Archive Collection on sourcenationalgallery.ie. On Friday 9 September 2022, entrants were invited to submit a 5,000 word essay. The prize was open to all members of the public over 18 years of age. 

Born in Dublin and raised in New York, winner of the Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize Chiara Harrison Lambe is a forthcoming PhD candidate in the department of Art and Visual History at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her winning essay, Stella Steyn (1907–1987): ‘A Name To Remember’ seeks to ascertain why Irish-Jewish painter and printmaker Stella Steyn, one of the earliest illustrators of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and the only Irish artist known to have studied at the Bauhaus School in Germany, rarely appears in accounts of significant 20th-century Irish artists. This essay is intended as the first step towards increased engagement with Steyn’s versatile art practice, which culminated in the 1950s in subversive nude self-portraits that reject the conventions of the male-dominated genre of the female nude. Two runners-up, Niamh Flood and Mary Morrissy, were also acknowledged at the ceremony in the Gallery.

Sarah Cecilia Harrison was an accomplished and talented 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 and Hugh Lane 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. This important collection was made available to researchers in Autumn 2022.

Leah Benson, Archivist, National Gallery of Ireland, commented: “The Library and Archives department in the National Gallery have, for some time now, been working to ensure our research collections and our outreach initiatives demonstrate an increased focus on women in the visual arts in Ireland. We have been so pleased to facilitate this award which allows us to shine a spotlight on this area and also celebrate an inspirational figure such as Sarah Cecilia Harrison.”

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 gone forgotten or been viewed as ancillary to the standard canon. Archives and primary research are essential to understanding and revealing these stories. Through the development of the Gallery’s collections, engagement and learning programmes, the Gallery’s Library and Archives, including the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art (CSIA), have worked to promote Irish women artists as well as female led collectives and industries. 

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

About the National Gallery of Ireland:

The National Gallery of Ireland is one of the country’s most popular visitor attractions housing the nation’s collection of European and Irish art from about 1300 to the present day, and an extensive Library & Archive. Entry to the collection is free for all to enjoy, learn and be inspired.

About the Gallery’s Library and Archives:

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