Edward Martyn (30 January 1859 – 5 December 1923) was an Irish playwright, arts patron and nationalist politician. He served as the first president of Sinn Féin from 1905 to 1908, and was a co-founder of the Irish Literary Theatre, the Feis Ceoil and the stained-glass studio An Túr Gloine. Though his own dramatic output was modest, his financial generosity and cultural activism shaped many of the defining institutions of the Irish Literary Revival.
Early life
Martyn was born on 30 January 1859 at his mother's family home at Masonbrook, Loughrea, County Galway, the elder of two sons of Anne Martyn (née Smith; d. 1898) and John Martyn (d. 1860), of Tulira Castle, Ardrahan, County Galway. His father died when Martyn was a small boy, and he was raised entirely by his mother. He installed an organ in the main hall, on which he regularly played Palestrina.
As a young landlord, Martyn took his place on the Grand Jury and served as a local magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant of County Galway. His land agent was shot at on the high road from Gort, and for a time Martyn himself was under police protection. In a critical essay published in 1895, Martyn had argued that Palestrina could be considered the real predecessor of Wagner in the reform of church music, a conviction that underpinned his later endowment of the choir.
- funding and direction of St. Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea
- co-founder and endowing of the Feis Ceoil in 1897 His ambition was for the Feis Ceoil to become the Irish equivalent of the Welsh Eisteddfod;
- sponsored and guided An Túr Gloine, Ireland's first stained-glass workshop
- sponsored the Irish Theatre, Thomas MacDonagh's theatre (1914–1916) presenting European and Irish-language work in Countess Plunkett's hall in Hardwicke Street
He also donated several significant paintings to the National Gallery of Ireland, including works by Degas, Monet, Corot and Utamaro, as well as works by William Leech and Jack B. Yeats.
The Irish Literary Theatre
In August 1896, William Butler Yeats paid his first visit to Tulira Castle, where he met Lady Gregory for the first time in Ireland (they had met briefly once in London). Lady Gregory subsequently invited him to Coole Park, where their artistic collaboration began. Mischievously, he left the rights to The Heather Field and A Tale of a Town to George Moore, with whom relations had remained tempestuous to the last.