Katherine Tynan Hinkson

Artist John Butler Yeats (1839 - 1922)

Date1887

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions90.2 x 70 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Dr Hinkson.

Object number249

DescriptionThis is a three-quarter length portrait of a woman, Katherine Tynan Hinkson. She is seated and she faces the viewer directly. She is wearing a wine coloured dress and a pair of pince-nez glasses. Her hands are resting on her lap, with her left hand clasping a small book.

Katharine Tynan (23rd January 1861– 2nd April 1931) was a prolific Irish writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. After her marriage in 1898 to the writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson (1865–1919) she usually wrote under the name Katharine Tynan Hinkson (or Tynan-Hinkson, Hinkson-Tynan).

Tynan was born into a large farming family in Clondalkin, County Dublin, and educated at a convent school in Drogheda. Her poems were first published in 1878. Tynan went on to play a major part in Dublin literary life, until she married and moved to England; later she lived at Claremorris, County Mayo when her husband was a magistrate there from 1914 to 1919.

For a while, Tynan was a close associate of W. B. Yeats (who may have proposed marriage and been rejected, around 1885). She is said to have written over 100 novels; there were some unsurprising comments about a lack of self-criticism in her output. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930; she also wrote five autobiographical volumes.

Tynan died in Wimbledon, London, in 1931.

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