Background
She was the daughter of William Morgan Jellett an Member of Parliament.
She was the daughter of William Morgan Jellett an Member of Parliament.
Mainie Jellett studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and under Walter Sickert at the Westminster Technical Institute in London.
She showed precocious talent as an artist in the impressionist style. After 1921 she and Evie Hone returned to Dublin but for the next decade they continued to spend part of each year in Paris. A deeply committed Christian, her paintings, though strictly non-representational, often have religious titles and often resemble icons in tone and palate.
In Irish Art, a Concise History Bruce Arnold writes that "Many of her abstracts are built up from a central "eye" or "heart" in arcs of colour, help 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" Her painting was often attacked critically but she proved eloquent in defense of her ideas.
Along with Evie Hone, Louis le Brocquy, Jack Hanlon and Norah McGuinness she helped found the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. She died a year later, aged 47.