Lilian Lucy Davidson

Lilian Lucy Davidson was born in Bray, Co. Wickow in 1893 and studied art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She began exhibiting with the Water Colour Society of Ireland at the age of nineteen and exhibited there every year until her death in 1954. In 1914, Davidson began showing at the Royal Hibernian Academy, contributing over 130 paintings in the forty years that followed. She became an associate member of the RHA in 1940. She also exhibited with Munster Fine Art Club and the Dublin Painters Group. Davidson was best known for her portrait, genre and landscape paintings. She was close to many of her contemporary, fellow Irish painters and held a joint exhibition with Mainie Jellet in 1920 and also taught artists Bea Orpen and Kitty Wilmer at her studio in Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. Among her portrait subjects were Jack B.Yeats, Sarah Purser, A.E. George Russell, Austin Clarke and Joseph Holloway. During her career as a painter, Davidson taught in several art schools and worked for a time in France, Belgium and Switzerland. By 1936, she had exhibited her paintings in a number of European and American cities including Paris, London, Amsterdam and Chicago.