Helen Hooker

Helen Huntington Hooker or Helen Hooker O'Malley Roelefs (1 January 1905 – 2 April 1993) was an American sculptor and portrait painter who spent a considerable part of her career in Ireland.

Early life Helen Huntington Hooker was born in Greenwich, Connecticut on 1 January 1905. She was the third of four daughters of engineer and businessman Elon Huntington Hooker, and Blanche Ferry, a daughter of entrepreneur Dexter M. Ferry and Adeline E. Miller. Helen's family were wealthy and well-established in American society and reportedly had six governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts among their forebears. She attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City until 1923, and in the same year won the American National Junior Tennis Championship, ranking tenth.

Artistic from an early age, she made her first sculpture of a rabbit at age 6. Instead of attending university, Hooker established a studio practice and enrolled with the Art Students League of New York. She studied sculpture with Mahonri Young, William Zorach, and Edmond Amateis in New York, and later in Paris at Académie de la Grande Chaumière with Antoine Bourdelle. Hooker was well-travelled, studying wood carving in Germany, sculpture and dance in Greece, theatre design in Moscow, and painting in Leningrad, where she learned from the Russian avant-garde painter Pavel Filonov.

Time in Ireland In 1933, Hooker met and fell in love with the Irish writer Ernie O'Malley, of whom her family did not approve. However, the couple married on 27 September 1935 at the Marylebone registry office in London. The couple first moved to 229 Upper Rathmines Road in Dublin and later moved to County Mayo in Autumn 1937. With financial assistance from Hooker's father, the couple rented and then bought Burrishoole Lodge in Curraunboy near Newport, County Mayo, with 40 acres in Hooker's name. She bought an additional 30 acres in 1942, which the family worked as a farm. They amassed an extensive art collection, which included works by Jack Butler Yeats, Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett, Paul Henry, Nano Reid, John Piper, Henry Moore, Amedeo Modigliani, and Georges Rouault. The couple had three children, Cathal, Etáin, and Cormac. By 1944, their marriage was failing, leading to Hooker requesting a divorce in late 1946 in the United States. They finally separated and divorced in 1952, and Hooker abducted two of the eldest children to Colorado Springs, Colorado without O'Malley's consent. Their youngest remained with O'Malley in Ireland.

Hooker continued to be a generous patron of the arts in Ireland. In 1992, she donated a collection of 1,200 of her photographic works to the National Library of Ireland. The photographs were taken by Hooker and O'Malley, and featured ancient monastic sites, scenic views, and candid portrait photographs. Hooker established the O'Malley collection of paintings by other artists in collaboration with the Irish American Cultural Institution. Part of this collection is on permanent loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the other half with the Mayo County Council. She originally wished a museum would be built in Mayo to house the collection, but it did not come to fruition. She was widowed in 1971. Hooker died on 2 April 1993, in Greenwich. The University of Limerick officially inaugurated the Helen Hooker-O'Malley Roelofs Sculpture Trust in September 1993. The trust includes all 41 heads and figures of her Irish portraits.