Margaret Allen

Margaret Allen (1832–1914) was an Irish portrait and genre painter, the first woman to be an honorary academian of the Royal Hibernian Academy and one of Dublin's earliest female commercial photographers.

Allen was born in 1832, the oldest daughter of Mark Allen the owner of a picture framing, artist supplies, and lithographic printing business in Dublin. Little is known about her artistic training but it is likely she attended the Dublin Society drawing school and received art education in Paris. She exhibited over 50 paintings with the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1853 and 1894, and was the first woman to be admitted as an honorary academician of the Academy. She received that recognition in 1878. Allen's paintings provide an historical resource, particularly due to her prominent use of social commentary, which was a novel practice in her time. Her political sympathies are evident in paintings such as ‘The Last Hour in the Old Land’ (1876), and ‘Bad news in troubled times: ‘An important arrest has been made of a young man named —’’ (1886) with explicit references to the Irish nationalist cause. Allen commented on Irish-British antagonism, including in paintings she exhibited in Britain. M. Allen & Co. was one of the first commercial photography studios in Dublin, Margaret painted backdrops and likely hand-tinted photographic prints. By 1871 she was behind the camera as a professional photographer.

Notable works and exhibitions Allen's painting ‘Bad news in troubled times''' is displayed as part of the collection of Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University.

The 2023 RHA and Irish National Gallery It took a century'' exhibition featured one of Allen's portraits, depicting an unnamed man. This work was presented alongside works by the 59 female RHA academicians.