Clodagh Finn: Meet the 95-year-old artist who modelled for ‘Mother Ireland’ statue

There is an irony in that because the original sculpture, a depiction of Mother Ireland (Mise Éire) with a dying soldier which stands outside the Custom House in Dublin, had somehow fallen beneath the radar.

Indeed, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar didn’t know of its existence when, 10 years ago, he was first introduced to the woman who posed for the sculpture by Yann Renard Goulet. It was commissioned in the 1950s to commemorate those who died in a War of Independence attack on the Custom House. 

Yet, as Maeve recalls, the then-Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport was rather dismissive and told her she was mistaken about the statue. She wasn’t long putting him right. She wrote to him, enclosing firm evidence along with a note which ended: “What’s more, I hope it [the proof] will help you not to doubt the veracity of a lady of advanced years who can still vote!”

His reply — and apology of sorts — came promptly: “Dear Maeve,” he wrote, “I am now fully satisfied that you are indeed the lady from the statue. When I pass by it, I shall forever think of our fleeting encounter at the Strawberry Fair [in the Phoenix Park].”

The letter is one of several in a series of scrapbooks that chart the extraordinary life of an artist who has been at the centre of Irish cultural life for decades. There’s a photograph of Maeve standing between former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and actor Micheál Mac Liammóir. 

Alongside it, a congratulatory note from Mac Liammóir on Maeve’s 1973 art show reads: “I thought it so full of charm and perception and wish I could have seen it all again.”

Maeve Taylor is pointing out the note as she sits in the conservatory of her north Dublin home recalling a life less ordinary. Despite the many ups and downs, all of her memories are recounted with a large dollop of self-deprecatory wit. “I can’t cook, I can’t sing and I can’t sew,” she says. “The only thing I can do in the world is paint.”

Yet, she raised seven children, the late Tommy, Anne-Marie, Denise, Mark, Michele, Dervilla and Lisa. Anne-Marie, who has organised the afternoon get-together, says they somehow learned to manage for themselves.

Her mother, Maeve, she adds, lives on coffee, sweets and cigarettes though, up to very recently, she went kayaking every summer with her son-in-law. There is photographic proof of that, too, in an archive that is vividly brought to life by Maeve’s flowing conversation and razor-sharp memory.

Her father, a bank manager, was banished from the family home in Dublin when Maeve was just six months old because one of his siblings believed, wrongly, that he was gambling. He went to the States and Maeve never saw him again. 

Her two brothers George and Brendan went out to their father in their 20s, while her sister Joan remained in Dublin.

Meanwhile, Maeve’s mother Mabel Ellis (née Reynolds) moved back to her family home, Summerlea, in Douglas, Cork. Maeve spent the first 10 very happy years of her life there before moving back to Dublin. As a young woman she worked in CIE on O’Connell Street as a comptometer [or mechanical calculator] operator before enrolling in the National College of Art.

George Collie, artist and teacher, took her under his wing and when, after two years as a full-time student, the money ran out, she did courses by night. She had found her calling, one which her husband Mark Taylor — “he was a farmer and the love of my life” — supported when she married him in 1955.

She set up a studio at her home in Coolock where she completed hundreds, “maybe thousands”, of oil paintings which were widely shown, including at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Annual Exhibition. She worked in ceramics too.

Soon, she had a large fan base at home — and abroad. In 1972, a group of Americans went to her home studio and bought all they could: “They’d even have taken the half-baked stuff from the kiln if I’d opened the door,” she told Irish Banking Magazine.

A decade later, a letter from the Sunday Independent in 1983 gives an insight into her popularity at home: “An 82-year-old man drove specially from Tullamore to Dublin, bought a painting of Maeve Taylor’s he had seen on the invitation to the opening of her exhibition in the Arts Club and drove straight back home. Is this a record?”

Speaking of records, Maeve Taylor’s wonderful archive tells the story of her life in photos. There are shots of her with several artist friends, from Camille Souter to Markey Robinson, as well as ones with prominent political figures from former President Mary Robinson to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

There’s a photo of her painting the home of another former leader, Charles Haughey, at Abbeville, in Kinsealy. “When it was finished, he said thanks for the gift. I said, ‘It’s not a gift’, but he took it anyway.” 

Though she doesn’t hold a grudge as Haughey often opened the annual charity art exhibitions she ran for 25 years at the Mater Hospital, St Vincent’s Hospital and Kelly’s Hotel in Rosslare.

As well as raising hundreds of thousands of euros for charity, they gave many struggling artists a much-needed platform for their work, as well as a share of the sales. “I got a lot of letters from artists to thank me for providing this forum because they said they wouldn’t have made it as artists without it,” she says.

There’s also a photograph of Maeve with another former Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, taken last May at the commemoration of the bombings on Talbot Street in 1974. She is a member of Justice for the Forgotten and goes along every year to recall those who died.

On that fateful day, 17 May, she had gone with three of her daughters to Guineys to buy a white cardigan for her daughter Lisa, who was making her Communion the next day. When the bomb went off, all of them were injured, though they made full recoveries. Lisa even made her Communion the next day, with several stitches on her head.

“It was a terrible, terrible time. There were 12 dead at my feet and the glass — we were like a dartboard — was stuck in our backs,” she recalls.

There were other terrible times. She had seven healthy children — “I love all of them” — but she also had some miscarriages. Yet, she got through with the help of her “three amigos – Our Lord, Our Lady and St Anthony”.

She was a regular reader at Sunday mass in the local church, St Brendan’s in Coolock, too. She is keen to mention that as it was an important part of her life.

And yet, after many cups of coffee, the odd cigarette, a few choice expletives and lots of chat, you can’t help feeling that you have just scratched the surface of artist Maeve Taylor’s life and times.