Young Ireland – Grace Gifford | William Orpen Print

Young Ireland, Grace Gifford (1907) – William Orpen

Orpen painted Grace Gifford in 1907, when she was one of his most gifted students at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, where she studied under him from 1904 to 1907. He called the portrait Young Ireland — after the 1840s political and cultural movement — presenting her as the personification of a youthful, confident Ireland. The painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery of Ireland by Mary and Alan Hobart in 2025 and hangs in Room 16.

The title proved strangely perceptive. Gifford was a sister-in-law of Easter Rising leader Thomas MacDonagh, and on the night of 3 May 1916 she married another of its leaders, the poet Joseph Plunkett, in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol hours before his execution. She joined the Sinn Fein executive in 1917 and was interned in Kilmainham during the Civil War. This is the painting Orpen made of her before any of it happened — a young woman looking directly out of the canvas with the confidence of a generation about to change everything.

Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), born in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, taught at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, where his students included Grace Gifford, Sean Keating and Margaret Clarke. An official war artist from 1917, he became one of the most successful portrait painters of his generation, and his work hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Sizes & Format

• 21 × 29.7 cm / 8 × 12"
• A3 (29.7 × 42 cm)
• Available framed (black, white, wood) or unframed

Print & Frame Details

Archival matte paper, 250gsm (110lb), acid-free and FSC-certified — off-white, uncoated. Framed prints: solid oak or ash wood frame, 20mm thick, with shatterproof protective glazing. Ready to hang, hanging kit included. Unframed prints up to A4 ship flat; larger sizes ship rolled in a protective tube.

Free Worldwide Shipping

Framed prints are packed with protective corners and wrap, boxed with reinforced edges, and braced with internal supports for extra rigidity (max 3 frames per package). Every order ships free, made to order and delivered from the hub closest to you: Ireland 3–7 business days · UK 4–8 · USA 5–10 · Canada 6–12 · Australia 7–14.