Portrait of a Woman Writer: Friendship and Collaboration Between Jane Barlow and Sarah Purser

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article considers how women writers and artists in the patriarchal society of turn of the century Dublin connected with, and supported one another, through correspondence, salon culture and female portraiture. Women were prominent both in contemporary political campaigns and in the arts, in which the writer Jane Barlow and the artist Sarah Purser were well-known figures. This article considers their work and careers, focusing on a close correspondence between Barlow and Purser which demonstrates their personal and professional interdependence and traces the emergence of collaborative projects. Their friendship and collaboration are embodied in an oil portrait of Barlow painted by Purser in 1894, in which Barlow sits with an open book and another nearby. It is suggested that this portrait, which brought together two creative women, helped break fresh ground in Ireland, not by simply picturing a writer, but by depicting a new kind of female subject, a woman as intellectual.