Imogen Stuart

Imogen Stuart (née Werner; 1927 – 24 March 2024) was a German-Irish sculptor, influenced by 19th-century 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 internationally known art critic Bruno E. Werner, she was exposed to modern developments in the visual arts from an early age and a significant influence on her later work. She studied in Bavaria under the sculptor and professor Otto Hitzberger, who became an early mentor. She met the fellow Hitzberger student and later important Irish sculptor Ian Stuart while in Bavaria in 1948. The couple moved to Ireland in 1961, 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. They had three daughters, but divorced in 1973.

Stuart spent most of her life in Ireland, occasionally returning to live in Berlin. During her long career, she became one of Ireland's best-known sculptors, with her work placed in both public spaces and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Early life
Born Imogen Werner in Berlin in 1927, she was the daughter of Katharina (née Klug), 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), Germany's leading art critic and an editor for the Deutsche Allgemeine newspaper, who had championed the Bauhaus movement. Imogen and her only sibling, Sybil, spent their childhoods in pre-war 1920s Berlin. Encouraged by their father, the two developed an interest in drawing and sculpting at a young age. Both were taught the techniques of arts and crafts and sculpture by friends of their father.

Although her father he had served in the First World War, he was partly Jewish, and became aware of the "tremendous rage" in German society that eventually culminated in the Second World War. 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, He thought 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 time together, when Stuart would sing Irish rebel songs to her. The couple first visited Ireland in 1949 and moved permanently there that year, at first living in with his parents at Laragh Castle near Glendalough, County Wicklow, into what the writer Kate Robinson described as a family containing a "notable mixture of politics and literature". Ian's mother Iseult Gonne was married to the writer Francis Stuart and was the daughter of Maud Gonne, the Irish revolutionary and feminist, known internationally as the muse for the poet W. B. Yeats. She was not intimidated by his family, being a highly educated and skilled artist in her own right. By coincidence, Iseult was a friend of the German diplomat Eduard Hempel, a former German Minister to Ireland who was a friend of Imogen's father.

Imogen said of her relocation to Ireland: "it is very hard to describe how different this country was from the country from which I had come. It was a totally different world, on a different planet. The Catholicism, the nationalism, the magical countryside, made it all seem like going back a hundred years."

They had three daughters: Aoibheann, Siobhan and Aisling. Siobhan died in a car crash in September 1998 and is buried in Glendalough. I she is probably now better known. The couple divorced in 1973 after a long separation.

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. Although she became somewhat overshadowed by her husband during this early period, during which she held only a few one-woman shows.

Commissions
In the 1970s the Church began to seek a revival of religious art, led by a number of progressive leaders who recognised that the Church had under-invested in this aspect for centuries, with Imogen becoming a favourite of many church leaders; notably, she was given the newly created title "Artist in Charge" of the redesign of a number of churches, meaning she was given responsibility for hiring other artists, as well as architects, craftsmen and masons. This led to the careers of a number of notable Irish visual artists, of whom one of the best known is the stained glass designer Harry Clarke (b. 1889).

Later life
Stuart spent most of her life in Ireland. She died aged 96 on 24 March 2024, having been actively working until near the end of her life.

Style and material
Stuart's work is informed by 19th century 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 that the country was lacking a distinct visual culture, which throughout her career she sought to lay foundations for. Her work often combines modern European trends in moden 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.

Work
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.