Imogen Stuart (née Werner; 25 May 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish sculptor, influenced by Expressionism and early Irish Christian art. She mainly produced wood and stone for settings for churches but also created many secular works, and was exhibited internationally.

Born and raised in pre-war Berlin as the daughter of the art critic Bruno E. Werner, she was exposed from an early age to modern developments in the visual arts, which had a significant influence on her later work. She studied in Bavaria under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger, who became her main mentor. She met fellow Hitzberger student and Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple moved to Ireland in 1949, at first living at his parents' house in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, before moving to Sandycove, Co. Dublin. Ian Stuart was the grandson of the Irish republican revolutionary Maud Gonne. The couple married in 1951, had three daughters but separated in 1970 and divorced later.

During her long career, Imogen became one of Ireland's most renowned sculptors, with her work placed in both public spaces and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Life

Early life

Born Imogen Werner in Berlin in 1927, she was the daughter of Katharina (née Kluger), a former art history student originally from Upper Silesia (now part of Poland), and the influential and internationally known art critic and writer Bruno E. Werner (1896–1964), one of Germany's leading art critics and an editor for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, who championed the Bauhaus movement. Imogen and her only sibling, Sibylle, spent their childhoods in pre-war 1920s Berlin. Encouraged by their father, both developed an interest in drawing and sculpting at a young age. They were taught the techniques of arts and crafts and sculpture by friends of their father.

By early 1945, when the Russian army was advancing towards Berlin, Imogen's "golden childhood came to an end" and both daughters were moved to a convent in Bavaria, while their father went into hiding from the Nazis. He was in Dresden, where he had grown up, during the February 1945 bombing of the city. He recounted the experience in his best-selling 1949 book Die Galeere.

In Munich, she studied under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger, a retired professor for the Berlin University of the Arts, who taught her modelling, carving and relief techniques across a variety of materials. He became her mentor and she later described him as her most important influence.

There, in 1948 she met her future husband, the Irishman Ian Stuart (1926–2013). He had also studied under Hitzberger and is often referred to as the "finest Irish sculptor" of his generation.

Move to Ireland

They became inseparable during their early relationship, when Stuart would sing Irish rebel songs to her.

Both were preoccupied with religious sculpture in wood and stone throughout their careers. They held a number of joint exhibitions, notably in 1959 at the Dawson gallery, Dublin, while they both exhibited at the 1962 Biennale in Salzburg, Austria.

Style and material

The Virgin and Child (1991), on display at [[Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin|thumb|upright=0.6]]

Stuart's work is informed by German expressionist sculptors such as Ernst Barlach, but in a sensibility also influenced by the later Romanesque and Gothic art periods. She primarily carved wood, but also worked from bronze, stone, steel, clay and terracotta.

Her first impression of Ireland in the late 1950s was of a country lacking a distinct visual culture, which she then sought to establish. Her work often combines modern European trends in modern art with styles and motifs from early medieval Irish illuminated manuscripts and Insular metalwork. It has been described as having a deep foundation in Christian spirituality, but in "its deceptive simplicity" is both modern and devotional.

She also produced collections of silver, gold and bronze jewellery and a series of drawings.]]

She became a prolific sculptor for both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland church interiors. Well-known examples include the altarpieces and baptismal font in the Honan Chapel, in Cork City.

Her work also includes public art and monuments and portrait heads, including a bust of ex-president Mary Robinson now in Áras an Uachtaráin (the presidential residence in Dublin), and a Bust of the art critic Brian Fallon. Her public sculptures include the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, the 2005 Flame Of Human Dignity at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris,

Her 1969 Statue of Saint Brendan was created with Ian Stuart and is positioned in the town square in Bantry, County Cork.

She worked with architects, designers and metalsmiths throughout her career, including with Vicki Donovan, Phil O'Neill and Ciaran Byrne. With Donovan she produced the silver tabernacle in St. Mel's Cathedral, Longford.

Legacy

A professor of sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, she was also a member of Aosdána, and received honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin (2002), University College Dublin (2004), and NUI Maynooth (2005). She was elected Saoi ("wise one") by Aosdána in 2015 as the highest honour that can be bestowed by the state-supported association of Irish creative artists.

In 2010 she was awarded the McAuley medal (named after Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831) by the Irish president Mary McAleese, who paid tribute to her "genius", crafting "a canon of work that synthesises our complex past, present images and possible futures...as an intrinsic part of the narrative of modern Irish art". The biography Imogen Stuart, Sculptor on her work and life was published in 2002 by the art critic and writer Brian Fallon, and included a foreword by the archaeologist and historian Peter Harbison.

<gallery widths="180" heights="180" perrow=3>

File:Iarthair Chorcaí 038 (cropped).jpg|Statue of Saint Brendan, with Ian Stuart, Bantry, County Cork, 1969

File:Honan Chapel Altar1.jpg|The altar in the Honan Chapel, Cork, c. 1986

File:The Hands Cavan Town - panoramio (cropped).jpg|The Hands of Peace, 1989. Market Square, Cavan town. Many of Stuart's later works combine imagery of dolmens and praying hands.

File:St Teresas Church Dublin Methos 01.JPG|Angel of Peace, bronze, 2008. St. Teresa's Carmelite Church, Dublin.

File:Longford St. Mel's Cathedral Sanctuary Cross 2019 08 23 (cropped).jpg|Sanctuary cross, cast bronze, with Vicki Donovan, St Mel's Cathedral, County Longford

File:Longford St. Mel's Cathedral Apse Tabernacle II 2019 08 23 (cropped).jpg|Tabernacle, St. Mel's Cathedral, Longford. This work evokes the early medieval format of a House-shaped shrine, with the upper portion directly referencing the 12th century Saint Manchan's Shrine.

</gallery>

Notes

Sources

  • Official website
  • Works by Imogen Stuart at Mary Immaculate College (archived 2013)
  • St. Stephen's Church, Killiney, Co. Dublin. Imogen Stuart: Artist in Residence
  • Stations of the Cross, Ballintubber Abbey, Co. Mayo