Mabel Young

Mabel Young (18 August 1889 – 8 February 1974) was a British artist, who spent her career painting in Ireland.

Early life Mabel Florence Young was born in Ryde, Isle of Wight, on 18 August 1889. She was the youngest of seven children of Emma and William Henry Young, owner of a coaching business. Young was educated in Ryde, but due to a decline in her father's coach business after the advent of the motor car, she became a seamstress. She moved to Dublin in 1914 to work as an assistant to her sister, the housekeeping manager of the Shelbourne Hotel. She evaded gunfire on Easter Monday 1916 as she walked home from a day the Phoenix Park via O'Connell Bridge. During the civil war, on 1 July 1922 Young barely escaped a stray bullet that was shot through her living-room window and lodged in the wall. In 1924, Young met Paul Henry whilst holidaying in Kilmacanogue, County Wicklow, becoming his student and lover, until she discovered he was married to Grace Henry. She then went to run a guesthouse at Carrigoona Cottage, Kilmacanogue. A frequent visitor was the writer Mary Manning, who later used her time in the cottage as inspiration for the play Storm over Wicklow (1933).

Artistic career In 1928, Young exhibited for the first time with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) with the painting, Sugar Loaf mountain. She continued to exhibit with the RHA until 1961, showing 32 works in total. The Sugar Loaf mountain was also exhibited at the Helen Hackett Gallery, New York as a show of Irish paintings in 1928. Henry moved in with Young at Carrigoona Cottage in 1929, building a studio there. She contributed to the Tailteann Games exhibition of Irish art in 1932. Young went on to hold her first solo exhibition in 1933 at the Country Shop, St Stephen's Green, Dublin. During the summer of 1938, she and Henry visited the Twelve Bens area of Connemara, where Henry was collecting material for his autumn exhibition. In 1939 she exhibited Summer flowers in a vase in Dublin at a solo show. The Combridge Fine Art Gallery at the Shelbourne Hotel showed her a number of her paintings in 1940, primarily of Wicklow scenes, such as Lough Dan and the Sally Gap, and some areas of the south of France. Young's painting, The white rocks, Killarney, was exhibited at the Hotel in 1942. In 1944, she exhibited The beech wood in November with the RHA, and in the same year was featured in a show at Goodwin Galleries, Limerick, Irish Artists.