Mary Georgina Barton

Mary Georgina Barton was born on 3 April 1861 in Dundalk. In 1985 she moved to London where she studied at Westminster School of Art. In 1898 she studied in Rome where she also gave art classes. In the years that followed she taught small groups of women at the homes of the landed gentry around the country and became a member of the Women's International Art Club and the Water Colour Society of Ireland. Mary Barton is best known for her landscape paintings and her subjects ranged from nostalgic rural scenes of her native Dundalk to the foreign vistas of France, Portugal, India, Canada and Mexico, painted during her various expeditions. In 1900 she exhibited four works at the Royal Hibernian Academy and in 1904 two of her pictures, A Cypress Avenue and Autumn in Muckross, were included in the exhibition of works by Irish painters organised by Hugh Lane. Until her death in 1947 she exhibited frequently, with shows at the Belfast Art Society, the Guildhall London, the Fine Art Society and the Paris Salon, as well as Venice, Vienna and Durban. She died in Bracknell, Berkshire 8 November 1949.

Reference: Snoddy, Theo. Dictionary of Irish Artists: 20th Century (Wolfhound Press, Dublin 1996) 23.